Necessities
by hellomaryland
Summary: Steroline / Set after 4x09 / Officially INcomplete :) "Maybe she was enabling him, or emotionally crippling him for life or something...but he needed her to do it, so she would do it with bells on."
1. Alcohol

**_*disclaimer: don't even pretend like you don't already know that I own -0.000% of The Vampire Diaries. _**

As sad as she felt for him, it was almost nice. It brought out her motherly side, or something. Her Nana had always said that all girls are born with maternal instincts and an inherent ability to nurture and what-not. If it was true, then it was nice to see that said instincts had translated over into her vampire self as well, although she had a suspicious feeling that Nana wouldn't have approved of her vampire self, A+ nurturing skills or not. Regardless, it made her feel...good...which inadvertently made her feel disgustingly horrible because one of the most beautiful people she'd ever known was falling apart right before her eyes.

It was nice to feel needed, she guessed. At least that was what she assured herself of when Stefan asked her to stay home from school to just sit with him, or when she woke up to see him asleep on the floor of her bedroom, or when he called her in the middle of the day just "wondering what she was up to." Her presence mattered to him and she didn't know why that mattered so much to her. Maternal desires, perhaps. Maybe her biological clock had begun to tick after all or maybe it was just because it meant that _she _mattered. For once, someone needed her... and it was Stefan Salvatore, of all people. Ironic, it seemed, because she had needed him so desperately when she'd first turned. Her darkest, most freakishly horrifying hours were survived by Stefan's lead and now she was attempting to return the favor. Each and every time he called, busy or not, she answered the phone.

Because he was calling her. He could have gone anywhere, seen anyone. They had money, she knew that, the Mystic Falls history lessons Nana had given her weekly clued her into that. He was a Salvatore, and a vampire, and ridiculously good looking, and he could have gone anywhere. Instead, he was crashing on her couch, and her bedroom window seat, and sometimes just her bedroom floor, and calling her during math class just to see when she was coming home. No one had ever really been concerned with her punctuality before.

Okay, so maybe she wasn't doing him any favors by coddling him, and hugging him, and not opting to slap him across the face and tell him to move on with his life...but maybe she was. Maybe mourning periods are really important or something. You can't move on from something without mourning the loss, accepting that it's gone...at least that's what her mom had told her when her father had more than a few binge-drinking escapades after Nana died.

"Caroline!" Stefan's whisper, if you could even call it that, was loud, and hoarse, and sloppy, and he reeked like a distillery. "Caroline, I neeeeeeeeeed you." She was stupefied, but nor surprised at his current state: she'd given up and gone to bed a few hours into his attempt to cleanse his mind of "The E Word", hoping against hope that he would manage to maintain some semblance of dignity without her present...or at least that he wouldn't leave the house.

She rolled over to face his drunken form, his trouble with standing upright evident even through her sleepy, blurred vision. She blinked a couple dozen times until he finally came into focus, then spat out the best response she could muster at 3:40 in the morning: "What the hell?" She wasn't quite sure which of the 2 feelings causing friction in her chest was stronger: her guilt at leaving him to get to this point or her desire to shove him away and go back to sleep.

"You're awake!" He seemed to find this fact, or his voice, or her face, or something else that Caroline was clearly unaware of, completely hilarious and dissolved into a bent-over-eyes-closed giggle fit.

"Stefannnn..." the latter feeling had won out and she was halfway through rolling over away from him when his giggles suddenly ceased. In one swift motion, before she could react, he had swung his knee up onto the bed and half crawled, half fallen on top of her. "Oh, good GOD. Stefan, please, you're squishing me under here...ugh, your breath, is there even any vodka_ left_ in this house?"

"Caroline," his voice was even harder to understand now thanks to the mixture of alcohol-induced slurriness and the muffling that his face on her shoulder was producing, "I need your help, I think you have no more wine."

She rolled her eyes and laughed, as much as she could whilst her stomach was being crushed by 180 lbs. of the eternal un-dead. "I don't think you cleaned me out of wine, Stefan, but I do think it's possible you're so drunk that you forgot the word 'vodka.'" He snorted in laughter once, maybe in agreement, before he went limp and there was her window of opportunity: she threw him off of her with such force that he rolled over the edge of the bed and hit the ground with a resounding _THUD_. She endured a split second of panic that her mother would wake up before remembering that Liz was enjoying yet another round of night shifts; a comforting fact because in another split second, the hysterical laughter began again and this round involved Caroline as well.

She peered over the far edge of the bed to see him crumpled on the floor, staring into what she knew to be the black hole that is the space under her bed. "Stefan. You're _so_ trashed...I'm really sorry that I went to bed, okay?"

He squeezed his eyes shut as tightly as she'd ever seen anyone squeeze their eyes shut and she stared down at him, marveling at just how incredibly quickly the mood in the room had done a complete 180. "Caroline, you're my only friend." His voice was almost inaudible and it took her a few seconds to process what he had said.

"That's not true."

He rolled onto his back and looked up at her, suddenly smiling. "Yes it is." His mouth was smiling but his eyes were the same, untouched by the sudden burst of seeming optimism.

She forced the corners of her mouth to turn upward while guilt, and sadness, and some strange maternal instinct raged through her. "Need a bed?"

The alcohol fog seemed to be clearing quickly, but he hicupped once before responding: "I don't ever want to leave your floor."

Everything was much less funny than it had been about a minute and a half earlier, but she found herself giggling anyway as she tossed one of her pillows over the edge at him. "Well, make yourself at home, then!" Caroline propped herself up on her elbow and watched as he settled into the carpet, pushing the pillow around until it was apparently exactly how he wanted it because his eyes instantly slipped closed.

"You're so nice, Caroline."

Stefan looked...like her. Well, a 9 year old version of her, in tears because Nana's funeral was tomorrow, and Daddy had come home drunk off his ass again, and the babysitter had called 911 while Caroline hid in the closet when he started yelling, which ironically brought her sheriff mother home from work early. Instead of being furious, she'd simply soothed him and allowed it, to her daughter's complete dismay. _He's sad, Caroline. We have to let him be sad for awhile, okay? _She could still feel her mother's hand smoothing Caroline's hair on the closet floor as she bawled like a baby.

Without thinking her hand fell over the side of the bed to find her broken friend and smooth his hair, over and over, because in her memory it was the greatest feeling in the world. She wasn't sure how accurate her memory was, it had certainly failed her in the past, but a smiled tugged at his mouth. Maybe she was enabling him, or emotionally crippling him for life or something...but he needed her to do it, so she would do it with bells on.

* * *

**a/n:** I have _NO_ idea whether or not I like this...like at all. Thoughts? Continue? Leave it? Delete this because it's total crap? REVIEW, por favor. :)  
[PS, If I continue, it's totally going to end up all romantic & whatnot because Steroline would be the cutest couple in the history of cute couples.]


	2. AN

**Author's Note:**

Okay, I know that a/n's are usually kind of annoying and get your hopes up for no reason, but this one comes with an update, so that makes it semi-alright, right? You guys were so good in your reviews/subscriptions that I just** had** to. Your reviews were so sweet, and nice, and wonderful, and I am definitely planning to continue this story. Now that I've had some time to adjust to it, the first chapter isn't my _least_ favorite thing ever, ;) , and I've got some sort of idea of where I want to take this. Hopefully it doesn't crash and burn too terribly quickly...or not at all, that would be nice too. Steroline shippers have to stick together, you know? 3

_hellomaryland_


	3. Aftermaths

**_*disclaimer: don't even pretend like you don't already know that I own -0.000% of The Vampire Diaries._**

Hammering...was it hammering? Surely not. Not unless her mother had started some grand remodel of their home without Caroline's knowledge...then again, considering the habits they kept of divulging next to no information to one another, it seemed entirely plausible. Her room was probably transforming into some sort of den right before her still-closed eyes.

_Just go away _was the only thought managing to form coherently in her sleepy, foggy brain. Who the hell hammers at...what time was it, like 5 AM? It had to be. The hammering ceased, praise the Lord, and she relaxed her tensed shoulders, marinating in the blessed peace that enveloped her bedroom once more.

Her new found love of silence was exceedingly short lived however, because almost at once, the hammering was back in full force-no, it was even stronger, louder. Her eyes shot open, then instantly narrowed in frustration. It wasn't hammering, she deciphered as the fog cleared; it was pounding on her front door.

"WHAT?!" she yelled as loudly as her voice would allow, sitting straight up in bed. She was only answered with louder knocking.

It was all giving her a headache and she suddenly was filled with sympathy for Stephan...with a hangover undoubtedly the size of Texas, she couldn't imagine how he must feel. He was quiet as a mouse, so she assumed he was either dead or sleeping through it, but a look over the edge of her bed revealed that his spot was empty, not a trace of him left behind. She scanned her room quickly to find the pillow she'd lent him perched neatly on a desk chair.

"Stefan?" she wondered about his whereabouts aloud...the knocking paused, then got even louder and faster, almost as if...

She threw off the floral quilt that had covered her and bounded down the stairs. If whoever was at the door had heard, then whoever was at the door was a vampire. And if whoever was at the door was a vampire, and Stefan was missing, then...no. No, he couldn't have done anything, he was fine. He'd probably just...just gone for a walk. She swung the door open with such force that she felt the hinges give a little. And then she scoffed. "Are you kidding me?"

"Where's my brother?" Damon shoved past her and into the entry way, craning his neck to see into the surrounding rooms.

"Excuse me, do you have any idea what time it is?"

The elder Salvatore brother turned to look at her like she was completely off her rocker before he checked his watch. "Yeah...10:45."

"What?" She grabbed his wrist to check for herself. "Damn it."

"Yeah, hopefully you're not missing a lecture on how to be a grade-A trophy wife." He snorted in laughter, then turned down the hallway, calling Stefan's name. "Where is he?" he said over his shoulder to Caroline, who was following him and whining in protest.

"He's not here! And even if he were, I highly doubt he'd be too interested in talking to _you." _Remembering the drunken mess she'd had to soothe last night, she put every ounce of venom in her body into the word. Damon turned to give her a patronizing smile, his signature when interacting with Caroline.

"Come on, blondie, turn him over...blood is thicker than water, STEEEFFF!" He spun on his heel, letting his voice echo through every corner of her house.

"Damon, he's not here!"

"Then where is he?" Damon was asking the question before she'd even finished speaking.

"I don't know." She crossed her arms across her chest, trying to be defiant although she was sure the serious case of bedhead that the hallway mirror was reflecting back to her was probably totally negating it. "He was here when I went to bed and now he's gone."

"Well," Damon began, shoving past her once more and making his way into the sitting room. "I'll just have to hang out here until dear brother returns."

Caroline followed after him, aggravated at how quickly he was moving when she had only just gotten out of bed, and started to protest his presence in her home at all when she was cut off.

"I didn't hear her invite you, dear brother."

Stefan, ever her savior, had arrived completely undetected. He stood in the doorway of the room, leaning against the door frame, arms crossed and eyes hard. Caroline let out an audible sigh of relief and quickly moved to stand beside him, crossing her arms defiantly at Damon once again. "I _didn't._"

Damon, ever emotionless, was unfazed by his apparent lack of welcome and got straight to business. "Good, you're here...sit down, I've got something to show you."

Caroline looked at Stefan from the corner of her eye, making her best attempt to be unseen. He simply stayed put so she did the same. Damon shook his head and made a grand show of rolling his eyes before grabbing the television remote from the coffee table.

The TV was clicked on and the volume turned up. Immediately, the news was blaring and immediately Caroline knew why Damon had been so anxious for them to hear it. A dark headed news anchor was standing in front of a line of evergreens, an overly concerned look etched onto her face as she delivered the news:

_Early this morning, a resident out on a jog discovered 2 bodies located just outside city limits. No names have yet been released, but we do know that they appear to have been the victims of some kind of vicious animal attack...something which, unfortunately, is all too familiar to Mystic Falls residents. At this time, Channel 4 can exclusively tell you that the two victims, believed to be hikers simply passing through our town, were a male and a female, both around 30 years old. __We're expecting names will be released once positive IDs have been made and the families notified; now Sheriff Forbes has scheduled a press conference to happen some time this afternoon and Channel 4 will be there with all the coverage you need to stay informed and keep your families safe._

Damon muted the television and dramatically threw the remote onto the sofa as he spun to face the two of them, still standing motionless in the doorway. "Early press conference!" He threw his hands into the air, feigning excitement. "I've already spoken to the sheriff...or Mommy Dearest to some...and, surprise, surprise, it wasn't an animal. And assuming it wasn't one of us...somebody's here." He raised his eyebrows and looked at them, back and forth, from Stefan to Caroline, clearly anticipating some type of dramatic reaction.

Caroline waited in the same anticipation, quiet and staring at Stefan. He was sullen and serious; she was trying her damnedest to read him, what he was thinking, what he was going to say, but it was proving impossible. She wanted to throw in her two cents, wanted to ask both of the brothers in her living room who they thought it was, what they thought could be happening, but she didn't. She couldn't. She wasn't speaking to Damon until Stefan did. She simply waited in silence because if there had ever been sides between the Salvatore brothers, it was now, and she wanted to make damn sure that Damon knew where her loyalties laid.

"So?" came Stefan's response with a shrug of his shoulders and his eyes on the ground. _So? _Damon's face immediately scrunched up in utter confusion and Caroline was sure that her own face matched.

"'So?' Who's the one with the noble hero complex here, Stefan? If anyone, _you_ should be at my...our house right now telling _me_ that something needs to be done about this." Damon's confusion was unfading but Caroline made the effort to straighten her face and stand calmly by Stefan's side, giving off every impression that his reaction had made perfect sense to her.

"How do we know someone's not just passing through, hunting on the road?" Stefan spread his arms out on either side as he continued. "Have you heard anything, seen anything, talked to anyone? I don't think we need to get involved until we're sure-"

"Caroline?" Damon had cut Stefan off, clearly dissatisfied with his brother's response, and turned his attention to Caroline. "Please speak some sense over us all, my dear."

Her stomach turned as she locked eyes with Stefan, who was still unreadable. Damon was right, someone was here. She could feel it; this wasn't anyone passing through, something was wrong. They should intervene, they _always_ intervened. Baby vampire or not, Caroline had gotten used to being a part of the A-Team Good guys, and standing-by while people were killed wasn't something that the A-Team Good Guys did. It wasn't something that _Stefan_ did...Stefan, the founder and president of the A-Team Good Guys, as far as she could tell. But the one thing she could make out of the dark pools that laid in her broken friend's eyes was need. His need for a friend. His need for_ her_.

His eyes broke away from hers and searched her face quickly and nervously. He swallowed several times before bringing them back up to lock onto hers once more, and her decision was made. "I agree with Stefan." His once unreadable eyes flooded with very readable relief as Damon scoffed.

"Yes, of course _you_ agree with Stefan."

"Hey." Stefan's voice was loud, powerful. "I don't really think you and I would work well together on anything right now, Damon. Caroline and I are just trying to spare us all the heinous task of forming a _team_ until we're sure that a _team_ even needs to be formed." Stefan didn't miss a beat, even putting sarcastic air quotes around the word 'team'...he was almost, _almost_, himself. Caroline smiled. "Now allow me to spare her the heinous task of being a rude hostess and kicking you out." Stefan, ever her savior.

"Fair enough," said Damon, smirking condescendingly at his brother while he moved toward the door. He had one foot on the front porch when he turned with his closing remarks: "When this," he waved a finger in the air, sarcastically symbolizing the problem at hand, "all gets...you know, _out of hand _and people are being slaughtered left and right...I'll be waiting."

"Fair enough," Stefan called over his shoulder, and the door slammed.

When she turned away from the door, Stefan was already on the couch, elbows resting on his knees and hands folded under his chin. Damon's exit had been the suffocating silence's cue to creep back in and take over the room. She hadn't even spoken to him since his escapades in her room last night. She had no idea where he was...mentally...and no idea where he'd been...literally.

"Hey," she said, sinking down next to him and attempting to be as casual as she could possibly be, not knowing how far from the edge he was. "Where were you this morning? I thought you'd have the world's worst vampire hangover."

"Caroline," he sighed loudly and leaned back next to her, rubbing his eyes with the palms of his hands. "I'm really sorry about last night. That was awful, and...I don't..."

"No, no! You don't have to apologize, I understand. And I didn't mind...we've all been there, right? I'm a high school student, don't forget." She winked at him and he smiled...a real, actual smile that touched his eyes, just the slightest bit.

"And thank you," he said, his hand moving to squeeze her knee, "for what you just did. I know you, Caroline, and I know you want to help...but you know how I feel about...well, Damon and-"

"Of course I do." She cut him off and grabbed his wrist, preventing him from having to dive any deeper into the pain that Caroline already knew all to well. "I totally get it. I'm fine. We should wait. Don't worry about it."

He looked at her for awhile and she held his gaze until she felt her cheeks growing pinker and warmer.

"I owe you, Caroline. I owe you a lot for these past few weeks." His grip on her knee grew stronger and his eyes were locked on the ground.

She reached over his arm to place her own hand on his knee. "No. You don't. I'm just returning a favor."

When he looked back up, his eyes were dark and shiny; dark, and shiny, and wet, and her heart was being shredded into a thousand and one different pieces as she took his hand in her own and smiled at him. He squeezed, and she squeezed back, and for a moment she believed in herself: she believed that she could help him, she could give him what he needed, _be_ what he needed to survive this, hell, maybe even come out of it stronger than before. She could do this. _They_ could do this. It was them now, just Stefan and Caroline. She wouldn't let them fail. The A-Team Good Guys never fail.

"Caroline," he finally spoke and her throat was so thick with emotion that she could only nod in response. He held her gaze for a few more seconds, his eyes entirely readable for the first time that day and full of fear, and love, and guilt, and _need_. Just when she was about to throw her arms around his neck and hug him for hours, and hours, and hours, he broke their gaze and looked at his lap. "Do, uh, you need a ride to school?"

School. "Shit!" She leaped off of the couch and ran for her bedroom as fast as her un-dead legs could carry her.

* * *

**a/n: **After I wrote this, I realized that it seemed kind of harsh on Damon's character...and it's NOT meant to be. I love Damon. Love him. LOVE him. Okay, is my undying love for Damon established? We all understand it? Okay, now you can feel free to review. :)


	4. Attacks

**_*disclaimer: don't even pretend like you don't already know that I own -0.000% of The Vampire Diaries._**

_The latest in a string of violent and confusing animal attacks, 17 year old Jessica Walters was discovered early this morning..._

Caroline leaned forward to press her finger on the blessed button that would silent the sound currently blaring from her television. There unfortunately wasn't a button to convince her to peel her eyes away from the screen, however, and she watched as silent photos of a redhead with bright green eyes and braces moved across the television.

"Stefan!" She found herself unconsciously calling out for him, regardless of knowing what his response would be. He'd given her the same, dumb answer every time she asked about it since this thing...whatever it was...had started. The same answer he'd given to Damon the day it had started.

The news proclaimed animal attacks, as usual, and hunters were up in arms, demanding to be let loose in the woods with their rifles. Caroline was in the know, though; not surprising, she considered, since she could easily have claimed the title of town gossip. At any rate, it was picking up pace and her mother was spending at least 20 hours a day at the station. Poor Jessica Walters was the third body this week, as Damon would surely be coming over to point out any minute now...and it was Wednesday. "Stefaaaann!"

The phone rang before Stefan had a chance to show up...that is, if he even would have. He'd all but disconnected himself from the world after Damon's surprise visit. The world including Caroline. Conversations were hassles to initiate and even more difficult to hold. He left all the time, never asking her to come and changing the subject when she tried to suggest that she tag along. Sometimes he was even gone overnight leaving Caroline laying silent in bed, attempts to sleep being futile with horrific scenes of Stefan's prospective death playing through her head. She couldn't remember the last time she'd convinced him to eat dinner. She hated it. She was scared, and worried, and guilty. And it could all be blamed on the name currently blinking across her phone screen.

"7 people!" Damon was yelling into her ear the second he'd heard the ringing end, before Caroline had even had the chance to say hello.

"Yeah, I have a TV..." she responded bitterly.

"This guy's killed 7 people in 2 weeks and you're telling me that my brother still thinks I'm too terrible to work with?"

She was quiet on her end of the phone, answering Damon with nothing but a sigh because she didn't know how to answer. How could she betray Stefan? How could she tell Damon that his noble brother had become some puddle of sick sadness? She couldn't tell him that Stefan snapped at her when she asked where he'd been, or that she'd found 3 empty blood bags in the bathroom trashcan, or that the nights he did spend at her home were spent pacing and clanging around downstairs instead of sleeping...inadvertently preventing Caroline from sleeping as well.

Maybe she should tell him, she thought briefly, since it was all his fault anyway. But she wouldn't say anything. She wouldn't give any indication that Stefan had made some sort of humongous backslide in progress because she wouldn't give Damon the satisfaction of feeling like "the good brother." Stefan was the good brother. Stefan IS the good brother, somewhere underneath there. It was all stressful enough and the last thing she needed was for Damon to swoop in and pick up the "hero complex" that his brother had apparently dropped. He didn't get to do that. "Damon, can't we just...take this on separately?"

"Don't be naive, Caroline, Elena and I have been trying to figure this thing out since the day it all started."

"And?" She inquired anxiously; her curiosity overwhelmed her annoyance that he was calling her cell phone every. single. day. despite the fact that he already had an investigative partner in her best friend.

"And nothing." His voice was frustrated and confused; she could practically hear him frowning and pacing his unnecessarily large living room. "Nothing but bodies. It's...it's like nobody's here but us and, as much as it _pains_ me to admit this," he emphasized the word 'pains', drawing it out and straining his voice, "with Stefan, we probably could have ripped this guys heart out 3 days ago."

Damon was right. She knew he was right. "I'll talk to him again, okay? Just give me some time."

"Well as much as I'd _loove_ to do that, time's one thing we may not have, Little Blonde." And the dial tone began.

Caroline huffed and pulled her feet up onto the couch. Why couldn't things ever go south singularly? Why did it all have to happen in some proverbial avalanche of SUCK? Couldn't Stefan save his deepest and darkest for a time when some unknown outsider wasn't snacking on kids she went to school with? Or couldn't said outsider at least go on some sort of diet until Stefan was well enough to crawl out of his hole? She was almost ready to laugh at how wrong it all was when she heard the door slam. "Stefan? Stefan!"

She could hear his feet moving through the entry way, but by the time she entered he was already gone. As usual. "Stefaaaaan!"

She walked back to the living room in frustration and stared at the television screen. She'd almost given up and decided to just try again another time when her cell phone began to vibrate, loud against the coffee table and flashing Damon's name once again. She hit the 'Ignore' button in annoyance and spun around, ready to bellow out Stefan's name with even more unnecessary "As" attached, but there he was. Smirking right behind her as she gasped loud and jumped at least a foot backward.

"Ugh, STOP!" she shoved him back away from her, attempting to be stern while he laughed. She failed though: partly because Caroline Forbes has never been an accomplished disciplinarian and partly because Stefan's laughter was such a completely and totally rare thing these days. She could hardly believe it and far too much joy immediately formed in the pit of her stomach. Smiling was a stretch, _speaking_ was even a stretch, but laughter...she would insist upon him sneaking up and scaring her every time they interacted if she could. He still seemed sullen and more slow moving, but he was in the same room with her, seemingly willing to breathe the same air as her, for at least a few minutes, and she relished it as she thought of how she could possibly bring up the topic of working with Damon and not send him spiraling back out of her life.

"They're speeding up," she pointed out the obvious.

Stefan simply nodded in return, his eyes now locked on the muted TV. She studied him as they spent a few minutes in silence. She was going to speak up, of course; she's Caroline, it's what she does. And considering the circumstances, that was a lucky thing. But he was so fragile and she was so afraid. Anything and everything, she felt, could be exactly what he needed to send him back to her bedside in a drunken, 4 AM fit. Approaching things gingerly had never been her forte, but now it was a mandatory task in every conversation she had with her temporary roommate.

His eyes were what finally drove her to speak; they were crushed, but not the same kind of crushed they were at 4 AM. They made his mean streak of the past few days seem even more uncharacteristic of her friend. They were devastated for the redhead and her tearful mother who had now come onto the screen, speaking words that they couldn't hear frantically into a news reporter's microphone. He watched it all intently, his eyes following the movement of every picture of the girl that they displayed, as if he could hear what was being said, hear the story they were telling about her life.

"She was just a kid." His voice was hardly above a whisper. He seemed hypnotized, completely wrapped up in the world of Jessica Walters' Family, like Caroline's eventual words may have been futile because he probably wouldn't even hear them. But she spoke anyway.

"What do you think?" was the response she'd finally settled on after at least 5 minutes of silent, mental debating, and for a second, maybe just like, a millisecond, she swore that she saw_ him_...Stefan, her friend, who he had been before this mess had thrown him into the mud and left him for dead.

His eyes finally broke away from the TV, with a loud intake of breath, and he looked at the ground, shuffling his feet and shaking his head. "You know what I think, Caroline."

She rolled her eyes, one thing that was her specialty. She'd known it was coming, his empathetic yet incredibly apathetic answer, but that still did no good in preparing her for the frustration that would come with it. Every single time she'd asked, any time she'd pointed out the killings throughout Mystic Falls, or suggested that something was possibly seriously amiss, he'd responded the same: it wasn't their business, he didn't want to be the hero of Mystic Falls, they couldn't risk it, they didn't know for sure that it wasn't an animal, Damon and Elena, and blah, blah, and blah. And with that, the split-second glimpse of the real him, her real sweet, brave friend, vanished into thin freaking air.

"Stefan." she turned to face him, willing her face to be serious and fear-inspiring.

"Caroline." she clearly failed because he placed a hand atop her blonde head and gave her a half-smile as he turned to exit the room. His unusual friendliness spurred her on.

Maybe she should just let him go and forget about it, forget about everything. Clearly it was what he wanted and maybe it was what he needed; maybe his refusal to do something good was part of his mourning process or something. Maybe he needed to be apathetic and disconnected from the world, and sit and sulk about his own problems while everything burned. And maybe...she should probably let him. But they were the A-Team Good Guys, and maybe this mourning period needed to take 5. Damon was right; seeing as this vampire was also some sort of wizard, without Stefan they would never get it done, they wouldn't be able to stop this guy until it was too late...until he'd taken down half the population of Mystic Falls.

"Stefan, I get it, okay?" he halted in the doorway, his back still to her, "I get that the last thing you want to do with a broken heart is be some kind of hero. I get that you don't feel like working miracles, or sticking up for people who would drive a stake through your heart with a smile on their face...but we can't just sit here, okay? Like, obviously somebody is doing something bad..."

She paused, waiting for him to snap at her, or just turn around, or laugh, or even cry...something. But all he did was lean against the door frame, still facing away from her.

"I_ know_ that you know that, Stefan." And she did know. He watched every newscast about the killings; she could hear the TV blaring every night from all the way upstairs in her room. And just then, watching the latest victim's story, he'd stood completely still for the first time in weeks...with pain in his eyes, even more pain than usually plagued them, and she desperately wanted him to act..._them_ to act. It was the one pain in his life that they actually had the power to do something about, yet they weren't. They simply weren't.

"Someone is doing something really, really bad...in _our_ town...and you always protected it before."

"You're wrong," his quiet voice cut through the thick silence that had immediately started to suffocate her as soon as she'd stopped speaking. "You're wrong," he finally turned to face her, "I didn't do it for the town, Caroline, or these people. I did it for...her, I did it for one person's protection and that person is now a vampire, who can no longer be killed-"

She jumped in, cutting off his ramblings before the fire they'd started in her stomach could grow any hotter. "Except by other vampires, which this _clearly_ is, and-"

He returned the favor: "You don't think Damon will protect her?"

They stood facing one another: two sets of arms crossed over two chests, 2 sets of eyes locked in some sort of epic stare down, and 2 hearts, she could only assume, beating frantically in two bodies. The A-Team, suddenly on opposing teams.

It was lies, all of it, and she couldn't stand it. The fire in her stomach was spreading up to her heart, moving up her windpipe until it hurt to suck in oxygen. He was discounting himself and who he was, his entire character, and nothing she was saying mattered in the least. She knew him still, even if he had forgotten himself entirely, and she couldn't stomach her friend being torn apart by anyone. Least of all himself. The tears stinging her eyes and undoubtedly ruining her eyeliner only made the burning in her stomach hotter. Elena was her best friend, her lifelong partner in crime...yet Caroline suddenly found herself mentally damning her to Hell.

"Damon couldn't protect anyone as well as you could."

And suddenly he was right in front of her, moving at lightning speed, and squeezing both of her hands in his so tightly that she had to fight her instinct to pull away. "Don't do this, Caroline."

"Do what?!" His eyes were no longer crushed, or sad, or melodramatically depressed...but she didn't know what they were. They were different, and wild, and, unless she was crazy too, they were hungry.

"LIE TO YOURSELF! DON'T..." he suddenly furrowed his brow at her and blinked twice, almost as if he were suddenly realizing who he was, and where he was, and who _she_ was, and that he was completely yelling in her face. Her instinct had won over and she'd made her best attempt to pull her hands away, but it hadn't worked. He was stronger than her by far and his iron grip on her hands was making her palms sweat, and...and for the first time since the day she had met him, she was afraid of him.

Her hands were suddenly free as he released them and ran a hand through his hair, his eyes returning to normal, or as normal as they could be. She crossed her arms and waited for him to either compose himself and continue or flee the room. She sent up a silent prayer for the former and it was apparently answered.

He put his hands on her biceps and made eye contact with her for the first time in half a minute. "Don't lie to yourself, Caroline. Don't put me on some kind of pedestal where I don't belong...it was always selfish."

She shook her head hard and fast, lips pursed to tell him that he was wrong, but he continued, his grip on her biceps tightening. "I never did it for anyone but myself. It was _always_ selfish, Caroline...it just didn't seem that way until now." He released her once again and his hands dropped to his side with a smack. "I'm just...I'm just like everybody else, okay? I'm not noble...you're better than me, Caroline, you want to help them and I...I don't." His strange eyes were wet with tears. "I'm so sorry."

She couldn't see him now; all she could see was a blurry outline of the body in front of her that had just produced the biggest lies she'd ever heard in her life. Stefan was...Stefan was...Stefan was the best person she knew, the best person she'd ever known. All of her successes as a vampire stemmed back to him. The only reason she'd found strength enough to not eat the entire population of Mystic Falls High School was because Stefan showed her how. Stefan had taught her how to hunt, he'd given her the ability to walk in the daylight...hell, the only reason her own mother hadn't driven a stake through her heart was Stefan's kick-ass mediating abilities. Without his help, it would be her who was making headlines under the alias of animal attacks right now. And that had nothing to do with Elena, nothing at all. Caroline was Elena's best friend, of course, but she wasn't ever there when Stefan showed up to save her. Stefan had helped her, Stefan had been there for her, Stefan had reached out to her because that's who Stefan was...IS.

Maybe Stefan needed to mourn, but...but Caroline needed Stefan.

"You're lying." She pushed past the blurry image in front of her, bumping his shoulder with hers as hard as she possibly could. "That's a lie."

"Caroline..." his voice was nothing but a whisper behind her as she fled the room and made a beeline for the stairs. She began to stomp up them, two at a time, suddenly grateful for her vampire strength.

"Which is really lame because I thought we were friends, y'know?" She reached the safe haven of her room, thank God, and slammed the door behind her with such force that the walls vibrated with repercussions for a good 30 seconds. She stood with her eyes shut, letting her entire being shake with them. And then she sank to the floor, in the exact same spot that Stefan had slept...that seemed like 2 eternities ago now.

She had probably ruined everything, she realized with a sudden pang of horror and an equally sudden sob. All the progress she'd thought he was making was crushed or barely hanging on, she was sure. She'd believed in herself, like an idiot, and thought that she could help someone who hadn't even told her he'd wanted to be helped. But maybe he needed to be helped anyway and she thought she was doing it. She had been so sure that she was doing what needed to be done, doing what he'd needed her to do. Maybe she should have slapped him across the face with the truth about Damon and Elena much, much sooner...but she'd ruined it, hadn't she? He was so fragile, so sensitive, she had to handle him with such care...and she had completely thrown it all out the window. What would he do now? Go on a killing spree? Go pick a fight with Damon? Try to go outside without his ring on? Attempt to make another deal with Klaus? Or maybe he wouldn't do anything. Maybe he wouldn't be fazed because it was just Caroline. It was just Caroline, not someone who actually mattered like Elena. Caroline and everyone else meant nothing to him, after all. He'd only just admitted it himself.

In spite of herself, she waited for him to come after her like the Stefan she used to know would have. She waited, and waited, and waited. But all she was met with was more suffocating silence and a stream of hot, hateful liquid flowing down her cheek.

* * *

**a/n:** Do vampires have heartbeats? I was struck with that question in the middle of writing this...but I wanted to include it for effect, I guess, and I was definitely too lazy to actually attempt to research it, so whatever, enjoy. lol Annnnd, REVIEW POR FAVOR. :)


	5. Absence

**_*disclaimer: don't even pretend like you don't already know that I own -0.000% of The Vampire Diaries._**

"No tracks," Damon announced, flinging a stray branch a few yards through the air in frustration, "no tracks, no sign of a struggle, no sign of a _hunt_, period."

Numbers Eleven and Twelve had been discovered late the previous night, sending her mother flying from their home and Damon to her front door. The bodies of the latest victims, 2 men who couldn't have been older than 25, lay between the three of them, Caroline, Damon, and Elena, as they tried to make sense of the violent plague that had seemed to simply fall from the Heavens.

"Okay, we've established that the guy is good...anything else you'd like to discuss other than this same, useless shit?" Caroline snapped. "It's _stupid_ hot out here."

Damon's jaw quickly tightened as he turned to face the woods surrounding them. "You wanna talk about useless..." he cursed her under his breath.

Elena shot Caroline a look: a strange mixture of 'you're pushing it' and sympathy. Caroline pulled her sunglasses off of the top of her head to cover her own eyes.

"I don't think we've checked this part yet!" Damon said, dramatically clearing weeds away from the path he was taking, leaving Caroline and Elena standing in the clearing with the bodies, yelling instructions for them over his shoulder the entire time. Caroline was already genetically predispositioned to ignore all orders from Damon Salvatore, she'd recently determined, but she was surprised to see Elena simply stand and watch him walk away as well.

They stood in silence for a few moments, about fifteen feet away from each other and the awkwardness between them nearly tangible. For all Caroline knew, Elena probably thought she was sleeping with Stefan or something. And for all Caroline knew, she could either be furious or elated. Regardless, Elena had made no effort to make anything any better at any point during this entire suckfest, Elena had _caused_ this entire suckfest, and Caroline wasn't going to be initiating any friendly small talk any time soon. Luckily, she didn't have to.

"How long has he been gone?" her best friend, or worst enemy, or whatever she was, asked quietly.

"3 days," came Caroline's response. Nothing had been specified, but she could only assume that Elena had been asking about Stefan...Stefan and his apparent impromptu vacation. And it was the truth: it had been 3 days since Caroline's living room face-off with Stefan and it had been 3 days since Caroline had seen or heard from him. It had been 3 days since Caroline slept.

After their argument, she'd stayed in her room for hours and waited, but he never came. He never came and, when she woke up the next morning, he wasn't there. He wasn't at the boarding house, he wasn't at school, he wasn't at the grill; he didn't leave a note, or call, or answer when she called. There was nothing. Or maybe it was just her: maybe _she_ was nothing. Her heart ached for girl talk, to sit down and tell Elena just how scared and small she felt.

"You haven't heard from him?" Elena's voice was tense and nervous as she took a few steps toward Caroline, beginning to close the gap between them. "At all?"

Caroline shook her head and crossed her arms over her chest. "No."

Elena stopped moving toward Caroline to mimic her pose. Arms across her chest too, she furrowed her brow and shuffled her feet nervously, seeming inconceivably intrigued by a rock she was trying to dig out of the ground with the toe of her right boot. Every thirty seconds or so she opened her mouth and sucked in a gulp of air, fooling Caroline into believing that she was going to speak each and every time. But, just like Caroline, she seemed to be perpetually chickening out.

Finally it came: "You know...Damon won't admit it, but I can tell by the way he talks sometimes that...well, that he thinks it's..."

"What?" Caroline turned to face Elena, already knowing what her friend would say and already racking her brain to come up with arguments against it. "He thinks it's what?"

"He thinks", Elena began, moving once again to close the gap between the two of them, "it's who we _all_ think it is." Her eyes changed from frustration and worry into a sudden flood of sympathy and hurt. "As much as we hate ourselves for thinking it."

It was silent then: Caroline didn't need to ask exactly whom they all thought was behind this mess because it was obvious. The same name that was spinning in Damon's head, and spinning in Elena's head was reluctantly, oh so reluctantly, spinning in her own. They had exhausted their search for answers. They had left no stone un-turned, Damon had begun conducting nightly meetings with her mother and the Mystic Sheriff's Department, they'd even made the ballsy decision to briefly involve Klaus, and nothing had been find out, nothing had been revealed. And no one had been eliminated as a suspect. Not even her noble friend. The wheels in Caroline's brain turned a mile a minute, grasping at whatever straws she held that could refute Elena's assertion that Stefan could possibly be behind anything this brutal, anything this _horrible, _and Elena simply kicked the dirt once again.

"Caroline..."

"Stop." She had to cut Elena off; she had to keep her from going any further because Caroline was balancing precariously on the edge of belief and she wouldn't allow herself to be shoved off. She needed to believe in him. She locked her eyes onto the bloody, mangled bodies that she and Elena shared the clearing with and willed her mind to play every sweet, kind, wonderful, caring memory of Stefan that it possessed on a loop.

She saw him in the girls bathroom with her, the first day after she'd turned...and she saw a severed hand on the ground in front of her. She felt his hands wiping the blood from her mouth, promising to never let anything happen to her...and she saw the grass stained a deep, sick red. She saw him on her front porch, always checking up on her...and she saw bones, completely stripped of flesh, laying in a peculiar pattern. She saw him teaching her to hunt...and she saw necks snapped. She saw him sacrificing his own freedom to save his brother's life...and she she saw ripped, bloodstained clothes strewn across the ground. She looked and she remembered, she looked and she remembered, and she looked and she remembered until her eyes burned, and the images of death and destruction were seared permanently into her brain, and until she had completely and totally convinced herself that Stefan, _her_ Stefan, could never be capable of producing the mangled mess of life lost that littered the ground in front of her. Stefan.

It wasn't wrong to her, calling him her own. Parts of him were. She had never witnessed him wiping the blood from another baby vampire's mouth...and no one else had seen him do it for her. She had never seen him check up on anyone else for three weeks straight after they'd suffered some crazy attack and he'd made sure that no one saw him do it for her either...Caroline didn't even think he knew that _she_ had seen him herself. Had he taught anyone else how to make a poor bunny's last seconds quick and painless the way he had for her? She doubted it. Those pieces of him, those little, seemingly ultra-insignificant moments that assured her that he could never do anything like this, they all belonged to her. His bloodshot eyes looking straight into hers at 4 AM and calling her his only friend...that was hers.

Damon's frustrated groans in the distance reminded her of the reality that was immediately surrounding her and she followed after his noisy investigations, leaving Elena to keep watch of Numbers Eleven and Twelve.

"Where is he?" Damon's loud question startled her, asking before she had even announced her presence behind him.

"Where is who?"

He walked on and Caroline followed. "You know who, Caroline." He pushed through a pathway blocked by branches, each one nearly smacking her in the face as she tried to keep up with him.

"I don't know who!" She exclaimed, dodging branches and side-stepping rocks behind him as her frustration with the whole damn situation grew.

Without even seeing him turn back, Damon was suddenly in front of her. He'd moved with such speed that she'd nearly run into him; now he stood with his face so close to hers that she could count the specks of gold glowing through his fiery eyes.

"You know that this is Stefan, Caroline." His voice was serious and mean...but low and quiet, almost as if he were petrified for someone, anyone to hear him say it aloud. It immediately struck her that this was probably the first time he'd admitted his belief outside of his own mind. "You know it is and we have to find him."

"No it's not." The words were out of her mouth before she'd even had time to think about saying them and Damon was rolling his eyes just as quickly. It was second nature, her instinct to defend Stefan, her own personal savior, and she trudged on. "We _don't_ know that, Damon."

"We know everything_ but_ that, Caroline!" Damon's voice seemed to rise with each word. "There's one last piece to fall into place and complete this sick little puzzle, sweetheart...and it's my brother."

She stood with her hands dangling awkwardly at her side like a 4 year old, willing her mouth to speak words of reason but nothing came.

"I didn't want to cause this." Damon whispered, allowing his back to rest against a tree. He suddenly seemed to forget that Caroline was standing feet from him, maybe even forget that she existed at all, as he slid down it to the ground. His eyes looked off into the trees in the same way that Stefan's had been focused on the emptiness underneath her bed that night: looking but not seeing. Suddenly Damon, who could strike fear into the heart of anyone, seemed just as defeated as Stefan had at 4 AM.

_Everything is falling apart. _The words echoed through her frustrated brain, but couldn't quite make their way to her mouth. Her breathing quickened. Her heartbeat quickened. Her spine stiffened.

Damon was now a lump on the forest floor, Elena was silent and waiting in a clearing, obeying Damon's every command, her mother was as absent as ever, and Stefan had run from it all. The only person still standing, as far as she could see, was herself. The chaos of their current predicament spun around her in the same way that it spun around them all, but she'd managed to keep her footing somehow and Caroline's knees seemed to be the only ones that hadn't given out, amazingly enough. Sweet, ditzy Caroline was the last man standing, the only one with her head on straight. And it was almost enough to make her laugh out loud. She wasn't the backbone of the A-Team; this wasn't her role...but no one else seemed willing to fill it. She was on her own now, it seemed, and if everything was going to fall apart, Caroline Forbes was not. Caroline Forbes does not fall apart.

She was a good vampire. Stefan had said it himself...he'd said it when he had come to her for help, HER. She'd saved his and Damon's asses plenty of times, hadn't she? It didn't matter, she suddenly realized, because someone needed to keep their head above water here. All of them needed someone to stay calm, to keep it all collected. Someone needed to hold it together. And she was a damn good vampire...because Stefan had taught her how. And now they all needed her to be.

"Fine." She looked down her nose at Damon, or what was left of him for the day and mentally willed him to get up. "If you can let yourself pin this on your own brother, then fine. But I won't do that. I won't accuse someone that I care about of something like this." She was halfway back to the clearing when Damon's voice echoed behind her.

"You don't know him like I do, blondie."

"No," she tossed over her shoulder, not even bothering to slow her stride: "I think you've got that reversed."

* * *

She was half asleep, for the first time in 3 days, when the sound of the phone ringing ripped through her dreams. She laid there, telling herself that if she could just keep her eyes shut then it would go away eventually. But it kept on.

"Mooooomm." She groaned loudly, hoping with every fiber of her being that her mother had actually come home from work at a decent hour. The three rings that followed denied her hopes.

Her hand slowly emerged from underneath the quilt only to collide violently with the nightstand. Clatters alerted her that she had more than likely just destroyed her alarm clock and a sick sloshing told her that the glass of water that had been perched next to the bed was now all over the floor. A string of curse words later, she fumbled the phone in her injured hand and blinked until the buttons came into focus.

"HELLO?"

Nothing. Nada. Zip. Silence.

"Hell-O?!"

More of the same.

"Are you kidding me?" She fumed, jaw tight, and wished a slow and painful death upon whoever was behind the call. "Dick."

But inches from the cradle, her hand stopped, still gripping the receiver, as a sudden realization washed through her sleepy head.  
There had been no dial tone. Whoever was on the other line was still there.

_What if? _The chances were like, one in a million. She knew that, she wasn't naive enough to think that it had to be him...but she had enough childlike hope to know that it could be. And she had enough sense to know that she would curse her entire existence in the morning if she didn't at least try.

"Stefan?" She said into the receiver, sitting up in bed. "Stefan, is that you?"

There was no response, but no dial tone. "Stefan."

And there it was: a sharp intake of breath from the other side of the line. She pictured him, phone in hand, mouth poised to respond but stopping just short. She waited, leaning forward in anticipation. Her knuckles ached as she tightened her hold on the phone until she was sure that it was seconds away from being crushed by her supernatural strength. Her heart ached, beating far too quickly and far too loudly...it echoed in her ears and shook her breathing. For a moment she was concerned for her health.

"Please say something." She whispered. She begged.

Why was he doing this to her? Why would he call and not speak? Why was he torturing her? Could he not guess that maybe, just maybe, she could be out of her mind worried? Why would he wake her up when she hasn't slept for days? Why? She squeezed her eyes shut and assured herself that she was alright, that she could live through this. She was the last member of the A-Team left and she could live through this.

He wasn't hanging up. He was sitting in silence on the other end, listening to her do the same, and it occurred to her that it was because he needed her. _He_ needed _her_.

Everything had fallen apart so suddenly and she'd all but come to the conclusion that she had been doing the wrong thing all along. She shouldn't have let him sulk. She should have told him about Elena and Damon from day one. She should have made him move on. She should have made him act. She'd done everything wrong...and yet here he was, back for more. Wrong or not, he needed her. And as disgustingly selfish as it was, she needed him to need her. She needed him, too.

"You're gonna be okay, Stefan." she said, giving him what she knew he was waiting on, what she knew he needed. "You're going to be just fine, alright?"

He rewarded her by clearing his throat; his voice echoed in her ear and painful knot that had formed in her chest began to loosen. She breathed deep and sighed loud, knowing that the air across the speaker was loud in his ear on the other end. She loved that throat clear, she loved every bit of it. She now knew that it was him...she hadn't been soothing some random creep, it was really him. He was really calling. He had really needed her.

And the dial tone kicked on.

* * *

**a/n: **Ok. I don't really have anything to say here other than I don't love this. I mean, I like the end part...but the beginning is just "eh" for me, you know? You know. But you should still REVIEW, POR FAVOR. To make me feel better about my life and my choices. LOL Or to just share your opinions, whatever.


	6. Ataxia

**_*disclaimer: don't even pretend like you don't already know that I own -0.000% of The Vampire Diaries._**

Fall break was usually welcome. A week without school, or tests, or the annoying kid with glasses who sits behind her in O-CHEM and always tries to bribe her to be his prom date with pop quiz answers. Any break from school was a proverbial Heaven...but with the proverbial Hell that had sprung up in her life as of late, she found herself dreading the extra time to simply sit and think. Times like now, when Elena insisted on meeting at Mystic Grill at 5:45 only to still not be there at 5:55. Times like now allowed no-good thoughts to run rampant through her tired brain.

Where was he?  
What was he doing?  
Could he be...No.  
Was there anyone with him?  
Was he spending all of his time isolated from humanity?  
Could the three bodies that have shown up since Tuesday be...No.

His cryptic, late night phone call had been one of a kind and he'd given her nothing to cling to since. Nothing but a clearing of his throat which coincidentally played itself over and over in her brain any time that she touched her head to a pillow. He had called her. He had needed her, and she clandestinely cursed herself for reassuring him so quickly...maybe if she'd drawn it out then he would have called again.

The news had stopped covering the attacks, now filling up the primetime slots with video footage of the First Catholic Church setting up for its annual pumpkin patch and the Mystic Falls Senior Knitting Circle competition held at the community center two days ago. Her mother said it was necessary...people couldn't live in fear about something that no one could do anything about; the entire town would be up in arms, she said, if the coverage continued. People needed to feel safe, at least for awhile. They deserved to feel safe, according to her mother. Caroline stifled her immense desire to remind her mother that 'safe' was farthest from the top on the list of things that the townspeople were at the moment...she held her tongue. The families were notified quietly and life trudged forward. But a curfew had been instated and no one was allowed in the woods in numbers less than four at a time...not that anyone was particularly dying to go in there alone, anyway.

It was 6:00; that meant exactly three hours until curfew. All things considered, she wasn't sure why Elena had cited the curfew as a reason that they needed to meet at the Grill so early on a Friday night...surely nothing her friend needed to talk about would require 3 hours of conversation.

"Hi." Elena said as she dropped her bag and plopped into a chair at the table where Caroline had now been waiting for 15 minutes.

"Well, good evening!" Caroline responded. She pulled up her left sleeve as dramatically as possible to gaze at her bare wrist as if there was a watch there. "I hope I didn't interrupt anything."

"Stop being so dramatic, I'm sorry," Elena stated, rolling her eyes with a half smile. "Things are just...stressful. At the boarding house. Damon is..."

She shook her head and blinked, her eyes full of a sudden sadness for the elder Salvatore that Caroline was almost tempted to share. Almost...until her mind's eye flashed a picture of Stefan, passed out drunk on her bedroom floor.

"Guilty?"

"Caroline...not right now, okay?" Elena spoke with fervor but her eyes were locked on the drink menu in front of her. Caroline had noticed a strange phenomenon occurring with Elena whenever Damon and Stefan came up in the same sentence...a phenomenon that involved incredibly scarce eye contact. "Damon is just struggling. He's convinced that Stefan is doing this, and he feels like it's all his fault, and..."

_It is. It is all his fault._ The words rang through every inch of Caroline's skull, blocking out Elena's voice as she continued. _All of this is his fault. His and yours. _The words stopped just short of coming out of her mouth, though; she suffered in silence. An argument in a public place was the last thing she or anyone else in their godforsaken town needed.

"He's exhausting himself, you know? I'm just...worried." Elena finished, taking a sip of the water Caroline had ordered for her.

"Is that what you wanted to talk about?" Caroline sipped on her Coke.

"Yes. No. Well, sort of." Elena seemed nervous and it immediately rubbed off onto Caroline.

"What? What is it?" She knew her voice was pushy and overbearing, but lack of sleep could do strange things to a girl, eternally un-dead or not.

"Damon wants..." Elena trailed off, looking quickly to her left and then her right. She leaned further in over the table and Caroline followed suit. "Damon wants to go to Klaus and ask him to step in."

"What?!" For the first time in days, Caroline allowed her true sentiments to move from inside her head to outside of her mouth. "That's insane. That_ ree-dic-u-lous._"

Caroline's voice was loud and Elena motioned for her to be quieter, to not draw any attention to them. "I know, but Damon keeps saying-"

"Elena, Klaus is probably thrilled at all of this! Klaus is probably secretly_ behind_ all of this, okay? What on Earth could he possibly do-"

"Klaus could compel him." Elena cut her off. Literally...every train of logical thought that had been moving through the blonde's brain was instantly derailed.

"No." It took her a few seconds to swallow her anger, and horror, and whatever else was causing the knots in the pit of her stomach to be able to form any words that contained more than a single syllable. "Elena, no. You know what he would do, you _know_ that he wouldn't be interested in _helping_ Stefan; he wouldn't be interested in helping any of us!"

Elena's face said that she agreed. Caroline was right and they both knew it. But her words stood in contrast. "Damon says he can make some sort of deal."

"A deal to contain him, not a deal to help him. A deal to make him kill on command instead of whenever he feels like it, right?" Caroline stood and crossed her arms. The blood pumping through her veins suddenly seemed scalding hot. "Are you two crazy? We don't, I repeat DO NOT, know that Stefan even has anything to do with this at all!"

How could they be setting him up? She knew him and she knew he couldn't be behind this...yet here was his own brother and the girl he loved more than anything in the world so convinced of his guilt that they were ready to hand him over to the enemy. This was wrong, so wrong; it was Stefan they were talking about, her Stefan! Not some crazed loon out for blood...he was hurt, and lost, and he was kind, and goodhearted, and noble, and...and he was her own personal savior.

_For him to do something like this...for anyone to think he was capable of something like this_...her thoughts dissolved despite her best attempts to keep them intact and on a positive course. Caroline closed her eyes tight and swallowed hard because it was getting harder and harder to convince herself of Stefan's innocence. As much as she wanted to. As much as she hated any thoughts that held any hint of disbelief in her noble friend, they were there. Always there, dancing in the back of her head, just beyond her reach to extinguish them.

_"There's one last piece to fall into place and complete this sick little puzzle, sweetheart...and it's my brother." _Damon's words haunted the deepest parts of her soul. _  
_

"Damon just wants what's best for his brother, Caroline. You know that!" Elena said, bringing Caroline back to reality as she joined her in standing, crossing her arms and glancing nervously around them. Whether people were staring or not, Caroline was too bothered to notice or care. Whether Stefan was guilty or not was irrelevant to her, completely meaningless. Whether he was guilty or not, he would still be Stefan. And that was good enough reason to defend him to the death for Caroline.

"Please," she scoffed, rolling her eyes. "When has Damon Salvatore ever been concerned about anyone but himself and you?"

"That's not fair!" Elena started before Caroline interrupted once again.

"All anyone ever cares about is you."

Elena's eyes narrowed in clear confusion and if Caroline hadn't been so livid, she was sure that her own would have done the same. Where the words had come from she was clueless about, but they were out and there was nothing she could do about it now.

"Caroline..." Elena began, shaking her head.

But Caroline couldn't hear her. All she could hear was Damon, citing Stefan as the last piece of this Hellish puzzle. All she could see were bodies, bloody and mangled. All she could think of was Klaus, and The Ripper, and Stefan's freedom vanishing once more. And all that she wanted, out of everything in the entire sucky, screwed up, selfish world was for this to end...all that she wanted was for Stefan to assure her of his innocence. All she needed was to hear him. A cryptic phone call would even suffice.

_Please come back, _she screamed inside her head. Maybe if she thought it enough times, the powers that be would send him some sort of freakish mental message and he would bust through the door to save her...in the same noble, stalkerish way that he always did.

"Hey, everybody QUIET!" A stranger's voice tore through her mental agonies to capture her attention. Caroline and Elena's heads turned in unison with the rest of the restaurant to watch the man who had just called for quiet reaching up to increase the volume on the television set in the corner.

And everything stopped.

"Seven people, a family of seven, was discovered around five this afternoon slain in their home."

**Breaking News **was flashing underneath a clearly distraught reporter who stood in front of a slew of patrol cars, all with their lights flashing. Yellow police tape littered the ground behind her and marked off a house that Caroline had seen at least a thousand times. It wasn't far from her own...just up the street.

"Channel 4 has been on the scene since news first broke and, according to authorities, they believe that this attack is in fact linked to the same animal who has been terrorizing our town for weeks now. Most that we've talked to believe it to be some kind of wolf, maybe even a grizzly, as we've seen before...Oh, Sheriff Forbes!"

Caroline watched, not breathing, not feeling, not moving, as the reporter began to frantically wave to Caroline's mother. "Sheriff, what can you tell us about this attack?! Was it an animal? How are authorities planning to combat this?"

The sheriff appeared and the camera immediately zoomed in, revealing deep purple under her eyes...Caroline wagered that she and her mother had more than likely been keeping the same sleeping habits. She spoke, in a voice that Caroline recognized as one intended to keep everyone calm when she knew that they shouldn't be. It was the same one she'd used when she'd found 9 year old Caroline hiding in the closet. The same one she'd used when she'd smoothed her hair.

"Right now, we're working to try and figure out how this...animal...made its way into town undetected. At this time, we don't have much to go on, but we are moving the town-wide curfew up by two hours." She turned away from the reporter and faced the camera. "I'm sending every unit that I can spare to every public place open in town tonight...if you're at home, please stay there. Lock your doors! If you're out, you are going to be escorted home via police cruiser. Everyone please stay calm and wait for your escorts to arrive..."

She trailed off as she and the nervous reporter both glanced at someone off-camera. "Excuse me," her mother said, moving out of frame.

The reporter nodded in acknowledgement before continuing in an ultra-dramatic tone: "You heard her, folks, the sheriff is asking that everyone stay put, wherever you may be. Police escorts are on their way to ensure that everyone makes it to the privacy and safety of their own homes UN-harmed..."

"Holy shit!" came a call from somewhere within the restaurant. A baby began to cry. A woman cried out for her son to come away from the window. A young girl's voice began to yell for her mother. One man yelled for the television volume to be turned up even louder while another yelled for it to be muted. Multiple cell phones began to ring. Chaos erupted. And Elena and Caroline simply stared at one another, dumbfounded, smack dab in the middle of it all.

Caroline sunk back into her seat, her footing suddenly unstable. Everything seemed to be swirling in her vision, moving unsteadily around her as if she had become intoxicated on the sheer chaos of it all. She was briefly aware of Elena moving to sit next to her and saying her name a few times before another phone rang, this one much closer than the others.

"Damon?" Elena's voice cut through her fog and into her brain. "Yeah...I'm here and Caroline's here. I guess we're waiting on escorts..."

She studied Elena's face as she listened to Damon...it was scared, nervous...yet somehow sure. Her voice was steady and she seemed calm, trusting. She was hearing, Caroline realized, the one voice that she needed to hear for her to believe that everything was going to be alright. She was going to survive. Caroline looked down at her own phone, useless in her lap, and cursed its silence.

"No, Damon, you're right...we have to now."

Caroline's head whipped upward to look at Elena. She could feel the panic on her face because she knew what the conversation was about. Klaus. And Stefan. And Damon's guilt. Elena shook her head slowly a few times before she spoke, presumably to Damon but with her pained eyes locked on Caroline's: "We have no other choice."

She sat in silence, the restaurant bustling around her, and listened to Elena send Damon her love before placing the phone on the table.

"Caroline..."

She shut her eyes, hoping it would signal Elena to let her be. She could see nothing, feel nothing, hear nothing but Stefan...wherever he was. _Who_ever he was. She could feel the lump in her throat starting to slowly suffocate her as Elena continued, her voice breaking: "Caroline, you know what we have to do."

But Elena was wrong. It wasn't what they had to do. It wasn't even an option, sending Stefan to Klaus. They couldn't...she wouldn't. He could be helped, he could be fixed...she could fix him. Just like he had fixed her. He had done everything in his power to help her, to steer her toward success, to make her transition into a monster as smooth as possible...a life she'd never chosen or even dreamed of wanting was now something that seemed completely and totally bearable all thanks to Stefan, and the idea of turning her back on him and his friendship seemed utterly sadistic. She had to find him! She had to find him before Damon and Elena did; find him, and warn him, and tell him that he had to run and hide...tell him that it was okay because she was going to help him. How could she abandon him? How could he abandon her? They were two sides of one coin, connected by a golden heart string, and she would go to her grave defending him.

But 7 people. He had just slaughtered 7 people at once.

The lump in her throat was now all but blocking any air from entering her lungs and she broke. The sobs came heavy and loud, and Elena pulled Caroline's head to rest against her chest. "I know," she repeated, tears in her own voice as she set to work smoothing Caroline's hair over and over. "I know."

She couldn't decide if she felt more shame or relief as she bawled into her best friend's sweater. The last and final member of the A-Team had cracked under the pressure.

* * *

She ditched the escorts that had shown up at the grill. She snuck out the back door, quick as lightening, telling Elena that she'd call her as soon as she got home. The walk was quiet with everyone in town holed up in their homes or waiting for the cops to take them there. It was oddly cold for September and that was the one thought that she allowed her mind to form: _it's oddly cold for September_. She wished she'd brought a jacket.

She allowed her mind to switch gears when she reached her front steps: _I have to go to sleep now. I will go to sleep now. _Sleep was what she wanted and what she needed. She needed to leave for a few hours, shut everything off. A good cry had helped some and sleep was the next step, right? Would it happen? She didn't know. She doubted it. But as she stomped up the steps toward her bedroom, two at a time, she made up her mind that even if she had to lie perfectly still with her eyes shut for 6 hours straight, she would eventually force herself to fall asleep.

But she never got the chance.

Is it possible for your heart to stop? Like just completely stop? Because when her finger flipped the light switch to illuminate her room, she could swear that hers did. For a good 30 seconds, maybe more, everything in her was frozen solid, just as it had been when the newscast had first begun. Heartbeat included. For the second time in less than an hour, everything had stopped.

She didn't think she'd ever seen so much blood, even as a vampire. What had to be a good three-quarters of his face was stained red, some of it dry, some still shiny and wet. It was streaked through his thick hair. His fingernails were caked in it. She watched in horrified silence as a single drop of deep, dark red slipped from the tip of his right index finger onto her pristine, cream colored carpet.

Sleep was now the furthest thing from her mind.

His bright red hands vibrated, shaking with fear, or anxiety, or guilt, or excitement, or maybe even everlasting hunger. She didn't know which. But he seemed hypnotized by them: completely oblivious to her presence in the room, completely oblivious to the light that had just come on and revealed his hiding place on her bedroom floor. She willed herself not to throw up. She willed her brain to remind her lungs how to breathe. She willed herself to speak.

"Stefan." It was all she could get out and she barely even heard it. It was so weak, and small, and unsure, and she willed her knees not to give out. But Stefan had heard it perfectly well because his head instantly jerked upright. His eyes, still black with hunger, instantly locked on hers and she was afraid. For the second time in the years that she'd known him, she was afraid.

A solitary drop of dark blood dripped over his chin and slowly began to roll down his neck, staining one of the few clean spots on the collar of his t-shirt.

"Caroline. I lied."

* * *

**a/n: **dun, Dun, DUNNNNN! (OKAY, like you didn't already know who it was. LOL). Review, por favor? :)  
OH, & shout-out to BigBadWitch for her review that told me YES, vampires do have heartbeats. If you were wondering, check them out & read hers!


	7. Allegiant

**_*disclaimer: don't even pretend like you don't already know that I own -0.000% of The Vampire Diaries. _**

That night, when her father was in a drunken rage and the baby sitter had told Caroline to hide in the closet while her mother came home from work as quickly as she could...it was all she could think about.

Her mother soothing her father used to enrage Caroline; the very memory of it was enough to make her stop talking to her mother, even now, for days at a time. Daddy was screaming, and breaking the living room lamp, and the baby sitter had sobbed into the phone. Caroline had been terrified, unbelievably terrified, yet her mother had simply let him stomp around the house like a baby, scarring everyone for life, and making the baby sitter quit...all while she simply cooed at him, and rubbed his back, and told him that everything was fine, he just needed to go to sleep. Caroline had been so angry that she'd seriously considered refusing to ever leave the closet...something that her 9 year old self had decided would serve as a legitimate punishment for her mother's actions.

When Caroline confronted her about it years later, her mother had seemed dumbfounded. Of course she hadn't condoned his actions; _of course I wasn't happy about the situation, Caroline! _But she'd done it, she said, because she loved him. He knew it was wrong, she could see it in his eyes, and he didn't need a lecture. He had needed someone to say I love you anyway...I love you too much to abandon you when you flip the fuck out in your time of need. I love you so much that I know this isn't who you are. And I'm gonna help you because I love you too much to let you stay like this.

Talk about corny, right? All Caroline had responded with was an over-exaggerated eye roll that her 15 year old self was exceedingly proud of. She'd never really _got it _at all. It had always been a concept that just barely escaped her grasp. Maybe because she loathed her father with every fiber of her being, or maybe just because she had always believed that someone **acting** like a jerkoff warranted you** treating** them like a jerkoff. Or maybe just because she knew that her father **was** a jerkoff, even deep down inside.

But Stefan...with Stefan...suddenly it all made sense.

He sat Indian-style on her carpet, with blood dripping from his fingers and his face, and his eyes slowly transitioning from black to normal and staring up at her in hypnosis. His mouth hung halfway open, as if he was shocked that she had come to _her_ room in _her_ house. He stared at her like she was some sort of angel or his only hope in the world. And suddenly remembering her conversation with Elena, she thought that maybe she really was.

All in one swift movement, she was wrapping her hands around his wrists and forcing him to his feet. He opened his mouth wider and she thought he was going to protest but he simply kept staring and shook his head.

"Come on." She led him out of her room and into the dark hallway. He followed in complete silence, his arms limp in her grasp, putting up no struggle. Neither of them spoke anymore; their footsteps were the only sound echoing through her empty house. When they reached the bathroom, she flipped the switch that controlled the lights above the vanity and he jerked a hand away, moving his arm to cover his eyes with a groan.

"Caroline..." he began, and she couldn't tell whether he wanted to converse or just simply complain. She ignored him, too focused on finding a towel that her mother wouldn't miss. Blood wasn't the easiest thing to remove from fabric; much to her chagrin, she'd learned that the hard way during her first weeks as a vampire.

There was nothing clouding her mind suddenly; strange, when she considered that she had been a mess of conflict and crazed emotions only...what had it been, like half an hour earlier? Time had stopped. She could hear Stefan groaning and speaking her name behind her, but she didn't answer; she didn't have time for a fight, or a soul searching, or whatever would occur if she responded.

It was all coming naturally as she moved swiftly through the tasks that she somehow knew had to be undertaken. Her nurturing instincts seemed to have once again appeared in full force and she felt...however briefly...like her mother. Nana would be so proud of her...with the exception of her new affinity for blood, of course. A big bundle of focus and calm, she threw open the cabinet doors, grabbed a ratty turquoise towel from the very back of the top shelf, and held it under the faucet, letting it absorb the warm water until it was soaked through.

And then she turned to face Stefan for the first time since she'd pulled him from the floor.

His eyes had returned to normal, although still darker and much, much sadder than they should have been, and he was staring at himself in the mirror, his arms hanging at his sides. He was perfectly, utterly still, with the exception of his eyes: they were searching his own face, moving across the image of himself that the mirror was displaying as if he were trying to figure out who it was, who **he** was. She couldn't blame him, though, because part of her was trying to do the same. She'd been so convinced, so absolutely sure of his innocence and now..._now what?_

Holding her breath, she kept her eyes on him as he swept his own over the glass in front of them; it was strange to realize that they were both looking at the same thing but simply from different angles. They were looking at the same thing but thinking, she knew, two very different opinions. He took in his face, his hair, his hands...and then his eyes stopped, suddenly frozen at a point on his t-shirt. He furrowed his eyebrows and she kept watching, waiting for him to move on, or speak, or flip out...anything really, she had no idea where his head was. But he just kept staring, fixed unmovingly on a single spot.

So she looked, too; her eyes pulled away from his face and scanned his image in the mirror, trying to find something about the wreck it was reflecting that could possibly be standing out over his blood-caked fingernails and dripping lips. She'd thought it was ridiculous, but it ended up taking roughly 3 seconds. There was only one part of his new ensemble that was so horrible it caused his red-stained hands and hair to look suddenly tame. It was all too easy to notice: Just above his right hip, nearly but not quite hidden by his hanging arm, a hand print of blood was stamped tauntingly, glaringly. It almost glowed in contrast to his grey shirt. It was smeared and smudged just the slightest bit, as if whoever had made it had been involved in some sort of struggle.

She closed her eyes at the thought; her stomach turned cartwheels inside of her, sick with the image of the most wonderful human being she'd ever known committing something so unspeakably cruel. _Now what_ was right.

But as quickly as she'd shut them, she opened them again. She knew that he was guilty now; there was no question, all the evidence they'd been lacking was dripping from his fingers and permanently staining her bathroom rug, and somehow...even though she knew it was probably insane and wrong in about a thousand different ways...somehow nothing had changed: she still mentally referred to him as the most wonderful human being she'd ever known; she still saw him as a protector; he still needed to be taken care of and she was still going to take care of him.

He hadn't gone to Elena, or even his brother, but he'd come back to her. Caroline. For whatever reason. Caroline, who hadn't slept a wink since he'd left; Caroline, who had believed he was innocent the entire time; Caroline, who owed him her entire existence at this point. He was here, standing right in front of her, and for all she knew this may be her one and only chance to help him, _really_ help him. Now was not the time for weakness and personal crises, now was the time for her to cling to Stefan's proclamation of her being a really good vampire. She was a really, damn good vampire.

"Hey," she grabbed his chin and swiveled his face toward her; his eyes finally tore away from the hand print to find her own. "Look at me, I need to wipe this stuff off."

He closed his eyes and she set to her work, scrubbing the red stains from his mouth, his chin, his forehead, his neck. It was peaceful, as sick as it sounded. The world outside of her house had been thrown into a horrified frenzy as news of Stefan's afternoon snack had reached them and she knew that every house surrounding hers was filled with terror-stricken citizens all huddled around their televisions and waiting to hear if they were safe or better off dead. Her chest felt tight, and strange, and guilty when she thought of them; it must seem dark, and scary, and oddly cold for September to them all...but it was quiet in her own house. It was calm and much warmer than it had been outside. It was her house, and her safe haven, and her own personal savior had returned, fallen from grace or not. With most of the blood wiped from his face, Stefan was beginning to look like himself again, like _her_ Stefan, and a surge of something similar to happiness twisted in her chest.

"There." she announced the removal of the last of the blood from his face triumphantly and he opened his eyes. For a moment the sickness of the entire situation melted and she smiled. "There you are."

The brokenness in his eyes didn't budge. "Why are you doing this, Caroline?" His voice was flat and dull.

"I told you already," she said, taking his hands in her own and pulling him toward the sink so that the water could loosen some of the blood staining them on its own before she started to scrub his fingers. The turquoise of the towel was slowly disappearing, overtaken with crimson. "I'm just returning a favor...or do you not remember the day that I turned?" She looked over her shoulder expecting to meet his troubled eyes, but they were on their hands, intertwined in the sink. Looking at them or through them, she couldn't tell.

"That was different. You didn't know better."

"Well it doesn't feel different to me." She turned back to the sink and scrubbed his palm gently with the washcloth; pink flesh started to peer through the red. "And besides if you didn't want my help then you wouldn't have come here."

She was surprised at her voice: how steady it was when she'd been a puddle of tears at the grill. She was surprised at her words: how easily they were coming, how easy it was to be light with him, even in the darkest of situations. She was surprised at the affection she felt for him, bloodied up and all. Images of her emotional stronghold of a mother flashed through her head again.

What she had said was true, at any rate. No one had known where he was, no one knew how to contact him, there was no one to stop him. He could have left, he could be in Italy by now; Italy, or Paris, or London, or New York, or somewhere similarly fabulous and well-populated. He could have gone somewhere that no one knew him and no one would ever suspect him...it's what she would have done. She would have run like her life depended on it, although in a town with a history like Mystic Falls, it probably would have. She wouldn't have even bothered to bid her lifelong friends farewell. Stefan was better than her, though. She knew that for certain.

"I didn't have anywhere else to go" he lied behind her.

His self-deprecation started a familiar fire in the pit of her stomach. He was a mass murderer...and she still felt nothing but an instinctual need to defend him.

"Stefan, you could have left," she turned her thoughts into words as she turned to face him, sitting the bloodied towel on the counter top beside them. "If you'd really wanted to you could have run away from all of this and become a ripper permanently. You didn't have to come here...or face this." His eyes were locked steadily on hers, the same way they had just been fixed on the hand print on his shirt, so she continued, praying that he was comprehending her words...that they were mattering. "You came here because you knew I would help you, Stefan. And I'm gonna help you."

His eyes remained locked on hers for only a split second more before there was a slam from downstairs. Caroline's eyes moved to look out the bathroom door and Stefan's head whipped around in suit.

"Caroline?" she heard her mother's strained voice call out. "Honey? Are you here?"

It was normal enough for the next few seconds: Caroline's first instinct was annoyance that her mother always, without freaking fail, chose the most inconvenient times possible to come onto the scene. How was she supposed to explain how she ditched the police escorts? How was she supposed to hide Stefan and their new, bloody bathroom? She could shut the door, sure, but her mother was perpetually suspicious, and worried, and all of the above, and the pool of blood where Stefan had sat on the bedroom floor would definitely not go unnoticed.

Her mind was so wrapped up in formulating a plan, a practical plan, that she hardly noticed Stefan's disappearance. Well, her mind was busy _and_ he moved at twice the speed of lightning. In a single instant, his hands had slipped out of hers, and he was standing at the top of the stairs.

"Stefan!" Caroline half cried, half whispered, as she hurried to reach his side. "You're still disgusting, if my mom sees you we're _all_ dead..."She trailed off, distracted by the strange sound of Stefan's breathing. It was hard, and heavy, and quick. It was unnerving. "Stefan..."

She kept moving until she stood inches away from him and unlikely probability that Stefan had suddenly developed asthma immediately became the least of her worries. His eyes. His eyes were black.

They moved in unison: Stefan to take a leap down the stairs and Caroline to switch her angle on him. She positioned herself on his right side and pushed, as hard and fast as she could. He had a couple hundred years on her, and he'd just had a...well, a rather hearty meal...but she'd caught him off guard. And as she shoved him into the back wall of the bathroom, she was inconceivably proud of herself. But only for yet another split second.

"Caroline!" The resounding thud of two vampires cracking a wall had just turned her mother's paranoia up a notch.

"Shit." Caroline cursed under her breath. She watched Stefan as he watched the door, the veins in his his cheeks growing more prominent by the millisecond. Caroline's mother was clomping up the stairs behind her and Stefan was sliding her feet backward, bit by bit. There was no time for logical plans.

She released him and threw herself toward the doorway, slamming it shut and creating a barrier between her mother and Stefan's bloodlust. She braced herself for his weight to hit her.

"Caroline?! Are you in the bathroom?" She heard her mother reach the top of the stairs and begin to move toward the slammed door as she herself was suddenly pinned against it.

Stefan's breathing hadn't slowed, she could tell as his chest pounded against her shoulder blades again and again. Her hand found enough wiggle room to silently turn the lock on the door handle, sealing the two of them inside. Her mother began to twist it roughly on the other side, worry sounding through the door: "Caroline? Let me in! Care, come on! This isn't funny! Where have you been?"

"Mom, I'm feeling really sick, okay?" she hoped that the strain in her voice would only strengthen her story. "I...I don't want to see anyone right now...it's not pretty in here." _It's not a total lie_, she thought as her eye caught the bloody rag on the counter and Stefan's ragged breathing echoed in her ear. "I've got a stomach bug or something; no big deal, but not pretty. Don't worry okay?"

"Oh, Caroline..." Her mother continued, but she couldn't focus on the words coming through the wood. Stefan's left hand was on the door, his nails scraping long claw marks into the wood, while his right was wrapped around her own on the door handle, squeezing so tightly that she briefly wondered if vampires had to get limbs amputated due to lack of blood flow. She could feel the metal warping under their combined strength, twisting and denting, and she knew that it wouldn't be long until the handle popped off and the barrier she'd created to protect her mother would be frivolous. She could only hold him off for so long, especially with so much human blood running through his system. He was stronger than her, so much stronger than her.

But that was just it: he **was** stronger than her, **so much** stronger than her...and there he was, allowing himself, even if just barely, to be held back. His torso, smashed against the back of hers, was tense with effort. But not, she suddenly realized, effort to break through her...it was effort to hold himself back.

There he was: _her_ Stefan. That's why he had come back to her.

"Stefan." she spoke quietly, her mother still rambling on just inches away from them. "Stefan, please. It's me, Caroline. Do you hear me?" His grip on her hand only tightened, the door knob growing closer and closer to shattering into a million tiny pieces. "Stefan, I know you. Stefan, you're my friend, and I know you, and this doesn't have to happen. Stefan, I just want to help you."

He was silent in reply, his chest still pounding into her back, his hand still crushing her own. But he was thinking. She could feel it.

"Just listen to me, Stefan. Please."

His grip loosened for an instant, whether purposefully or not, and it was her only chance. Her heart pounded, but she wasn't worried...she knew he would let her.

Caroline ripped her hand from Stefan's and threw her elbow backward. Every muscle in her body pushed him off of her and he collided loudly with the cold floor of the bathroom. The unmistakable sound of ceramic cracking rang out.

"Caroline?!" her mother's twisting of the locked door handle increased. "Caroline, did you fall? Let me in!"

She threw herself on top of him; a second loud boom and her mother began to pound on the door, but Caroline couldn't acknowledge it. She planted both of her knees on both of Stefan's biceps, pinning him down, while both of her hands gripped either side of his face. He was fighting back, but not hard enough. He was letting her overpower him and hope flowed, unadulterated, through her veins.

"Stefan, listen to me. Don't do this!" His breathing stayed quick but his black eyes didn't waver from her own. "Please, Stefan! You're gonna be okay, I promise. You're going to be fine." She soothed, as loudly as the thin door between the two of them and her mother would permit. She repeated it over, and over, and over: '_You're going to be okay, I promise,'_ and, unless she was crazy, although that didn't seem too far-fetched at her current position, the black of his eyes was fading. Ever so slightly.

He was right there, right at the edge. Normalcy, or what was left of it, was so close that she could have practically reached out and touched it.

"Please," she begged with everything in her, "just come back to me."

It was the most miraculous thing she'd ever seen, watching his eyes transition from black to green. She wondered if anyone else had ever taken the time to watch it happen before. It happened slowly and quickly at the same time, like he willed it to speed up once he realized it was moving at all. The color was dull at first, but became rapidly vibrant and she grinned instantly, in spite of the fearsome insanity swirling through her mind. Suddenly, everything was okay. Suddenly, she wasn't going to watch her best friend devour her mother...suddenly her best friend had returned just as suddenly as he'd left.

"There you are." her thumb stroked his cheek and she felt his breathing slow beneath her.

"Mom, I'm okay!" She quickly yelled, moving her hands to rest on Stefan's shoulders. "I just knocked some stuff over...I'm just klutzy, and you know how klutzy people are when they're sick."

"Caroline-" her mother's sentiments were cut off by chatter coming through the police radio she wore on her belt. Caroline sent up a silent prayer of thanks. "Are you sure you're okay?"

"Yes, mom, I'm fine. I think the town needs you more right now, anyway."

Hesitation halted the woman for a few moments before Caroline heard her mother's hand rest against the door. "You just call me if you start to feel worse, okay?"

"Okay, Mom."

"And there's soup and club soda in the pantry...you know where it is? Do you want me to show you?"

"No, Mom...I know-"

"And the Advil is in there with you, I think. Second cabinet from the left!"

"Yeah, Mom! I got it." Caroline looked down at Stefan to see him staring through her arms at the door...his face wore some strange mixture of sadness and amusement.

"Alright..." more police chatter came and her mother's footsteps began to move away toward the stairs. "You call me if you need me, okay? I'm just a few minutes away."

Caroline and Stefan sat in silence, her eyes on him and his on the door, listening to the Sheriff's footsteps move down the stairs and into the kitchen. They were quiet as they listened to her pick up the phone, dial quickly, and ask Caroline's next door neighbor to call and check up on the girl until her mother could return. They listened to her rummage in the pantry for what Caroline could only assume was a can of soup, then sit it on the counter, placing a small pot next to it. And finally, after what seemed like an eternity or two...or three, or four, or ten...they listened to her leave. Then, and only then, did Caroline release Stefan's shoulders.

She watched him, waiting, but his eyes didn't leave the door. She made a move to get up from her perch atop him when he finally spoke: "She takes good care of you."

"Yeah, I know..." Caroline halted, keeping her seat on his chest.

His eyes, his precious **green** eyes, finally left the door to find Caroline's own. And they shone, wet. "Now I know where you get it."

He made an effort to laugh but it came out empty and hollow...scared. She stood and picked up the bloody rag from the counter, re-dampening it before she turned around to face him, still motionless on the floor.

"Come here, you're hands are still dirty."

* * *

**a/n: **Does Paul Wesley even have green eyes? Please don't slay me if he doesn't. LOL I googled it, and some pictures looked blue, and some pictures looked green, and some pictures looked brown, I don't even KNOW. But it's whatever, okay, he has green eyes in my fictional world. ;) REVIEW POR FAVOR!


	8. Amateurish

**_*disclaimer: don't even pretend like you don't already know that I own -0.000% of The Vampire Diaries._**

"What's wrong?" Damon asked abruptly as soon as the phone had stopped ringing. His usual sunshine and roses outlook was clearly in full force. Nerves twisted in the pit of her stomach as she sat in the front seat of her car.

"Well, 'hello' to you, too!" She spat back. "Good to know you're thrilled to hear from me. As always."

She waited and heard him groan in frustration before he answered in the most patronizing tone he could muster, no doubt: "Well you _are_ the sunshine in my life, but I have to ask...is this conversation _going_ anywhere, Blondie?" His sarcasm was so thick she could almost taste it through the receiver.

Caroline knew her own attitude was simply bringing out the best, or worst, of Damon's, as it always did; the two of them could go back and forth for days, eternities even. But she couldn't help it, not tonight; it was just coming naturally, sprinkled over every word that she said, whether she meant it to be or not. It was happening partly, of course, because she hated his guts. Every last one of them. Everything was his fault and he was only making it worse with his Klaus schemes. But partly, she despised herself for having to admit, the attitude flowed from her mouth like scalding water from a faucet because she was scared. Out of her mind.

Damon didn't exactly have a fun-filled history of taking it well when things don't go according to his plan, and the conversation she was trying to find the guts to initiate wasn't one that she expected him to be pleased with. It wasn't one she expected anyone to be pleased with. She wasn't even sure if she was pleased with it herself. But at this point, with Stefan barely refraining from sinking his teeth into everything that moved and his brother practically dangling a blood-covered carrot in front of a cage that led to The Originals, she figured that they were probably running out of choices...pleasant choices, at least.

"I wanna make a deal." It was incomplete, half-assed, and only about three-quarters of the way thought through, but it was the only plan she had.

Damon snorted in laughter on the other end of the line and she could practically hear him rolling his eyes as he responded. "About what?"

She held off on her answer. Her mind was working, cranking, turning; she was racking every last bit of vocabulary she knew, attempting to find words that would make her point sufficiently, or words that would appeal to Damon's understanding, or...maybe just words that would pacify him. Stefan's ripper state was sort of similar to Damon's every day state and her nerves vibrated in anticipation.

How, how, how? She tapped her index finger on her left knee in thought.

She needed more attitude. She needed to sound tough and adamant about it! No more Little Caroline Nice Girl. Or maybe...maybe Damon would see right through that. Maybe she should just take the "mom" approach and ramble on about how she knows what's best until he just gives in and goes with it. He didn't have tons of patience, so maybe she could wear him down fairly quickly. She had inherited her mother's nurturing skills, apparently, so she could only assume that the nagging skills were lying dormant somewhere inside of her as well, just waiting to be called upon.

Or maybe all of the dramatic smoke and mirrors were unnecessary and she could make him recognize how well she knows his brother and how deeply she believes in him. Maybe she could explain to him how she would still trust Stefan with her life, even with the blood of 7 innocent people dripping from his lips, or how she still saw him as the most wonderful person she'd ever met, even though she'd had to burn the turquoise towel and the bathroom rug, and even though she'd had to spend 45 minutes scrubbing his seat on her bedroom floor with a probably toxic mixture of 409 and bleach, and even though she still hadn't come up with how she would answer when her mother would discover the crack that the two of them had made in the bathroom wall...but that was the problem. It sounded insane, completely nuts. And she had no words to properly express it. At least not to make it seem serious enough that Damon would roll over and let his plan be trumped by her own.

"Caroline!" Damon's voice broke through the phone. "About _what_?"

She searched, and she searched, but she still wasn't prepared. She simply sat in more silence, listening to Damon click his tongue on the other end, and opened her mouth to speak a few times. Nothing intelligible came out of it, though. Just small groans and sighs, external expressions of her internal workings...or maybe her internal failings. In the frustrating quiet, she could hear Stefan's breathing from the back seat of her car, slow and even as he slept. _Finally_ slept. It had taken him a little while to get there, but he was out like a light, his arm hanging limp over the side of the seat.

His even breathing was catching; it calmed the world down, it calmed her down. The even rhythm tripped up the racing gears in her mind and forced them to lose some pace. Her own breathing slowed, falling into time with his, and her heartbeat followed suit. Two beats for every breath she took in. She wondered if his was matching.

Maybe if she talked slowly, focused on her heartbeat and Stefan's breathing, maybe something intelligent would come through. "Damon, listen..."

But it was too late. Time was up. Her silence had given her away.

"Caroline." Damon said her name slowly, precisely, turning each letter of it over on his tongue. He knew. She knew that he knew. "Where's Stefan?"

Her free hand tightened its grip on the steering wheel and her heartbeat increased once more, creating the tiniest sting of sadness that there was no way it could possibly be mirroring Stefan's anymore.

"Right here," she answered, willing her voice to be like steel.

She'd expected him to explode, yelling and cursing, the whole nine yards. She'd half-believed that he would find the hiding spot she'd driven them to in a split second, without her even telling him that they were hiding at all. But Damon said nothing for a long time. They just sat there, the silence even more suffocating than the night Stefan had called. Maybe she should have continued, maybe that's what he was waiting on, but she couldn't. The miraculous words that she'd finally been able to form had now all dissolved into fear, and nerves, and doubt, and if Damon wanted the conversation to continue he was going to have to propel it forward himself.

Suddenly the silence was ended and she heard him moving, his footsteps echoing in her earpiece. He sucked in a quick, very angry breath. "Caroline..."

Through the phone, she heard the front door of the boarding house open and she cut him off: "We're not at my house! If that's where you're going..."

It shut again. She'd been right. She'd anticipated his next move. She had the upper hand here, she slowly began to realize as her heartbeat reached a normal speed again, and he was totally in the dark. She had the upper hand on Damon Salvatore.

"Where are you, then?" Damon's voice was patronizing and sugary sweet with sticky sarcasm.

She didn't answer. "I'm not letting you give him over to Klaus, Damon."

She heard him start a word, one she couldn't identify that began with an 'H', but she cut him off, trudging forward. The words were coming easily now, not laced with attitude, but iced over with rationality. She was proud of herself as she spoke. "It's wrong, Damon, it's not even an option! This is Stefan we're talking about here...your brother. Or have you already forgotten about that?"

"Caroline, listen to me-"

"No, you listen to me. Stefan gave himself to Klaus for you, Damon, YOU. And now you'd just give him back? Well I wouldn't! How can you even think that?"

Damon interjected, quick, but with an unreadable tone. "Where are you, Caroline?"

"I won't do it, Damon. I owe him more than that and so do you." She'd nearly made up her mind to end the conversation right then and there, bring up the other half of her half-baked plan later on, when she heard Elena's voice in the background, speaking Damon's name as if it were a question. Suddenly, the conversation needed to be prolonged, at least for one more phrase: "_All _of us do," she whispered. And she hung up.

Everything was quiet as she tossed her phone into the seat next to her and ran a hand through her hair, realizing as her fingers broke through infinite numbers of tangles and knots than it hadn't been brushed in what felt like five years. The five years that had passed since 8:30 that morning. She combed through it a few more times before she leaned forward to rest her forehead on the steering wheel, closing her eyes. Thoughts and plans were raging through her brain like bulls in a china shop and she clenched her hands in her lap. There was nothing she could do right now, nothing she could make happen from some clearing in the middle of the woods where she'd finally decided was safe to park the car.

After he'd almost taken out her mother, Stefan was adamant that he had to leave, had to get himself as far away from people, human or vampire, as possible. When she wouldn't allow it, he told her that he wanted to be taken to Damon...he wanted to be locked up in the basement and cut off from the world; cut off from the world and from the blood that flowed through all of its inhabitants' veins. He'd seemed so sure of the plan, so sure that it was the best, most responsible thing for him to do. For the first time since he'd come back, his eyes weren't dead. She'd even thought there was a tinge of affection in them when he asked to go see Damon...if anyone could help him, it was his big brother, of course. Even if he'd hated him only hours earlier.

How, _how,_ could she tell him what big brother was planning?

She spent hours trying to soothe him and talk him down from his proverbial ledge until she'd finally agreed to take him to Damon. She'd lied, though, and told him they had to take back roads because the police had set up barricades and check-points throughout the town to try and catch...well, him. Blindly, he'd gone along with it and she almost felt bad for the deception until she reminded herself of the brilliant plan that Elena had dropped on her at the Grill. And then, of course, deception seemed like pseudo-salvation, so she loaded him into the car and started to drive; it was aimless at first, twisting along roads that seemed believable until he fell asleep. And then she'd started to drive South, still aimlessly if she was being honest, but as far away from Mystic Falls as she could possibly get. She'd finally stopped and made the call when she saw the _'Briarwood City Limits'_ sign. Briarwood was 70 miles out...that kind of distance had to be safe, it had used up an entire tank of gas, at any rate.

There was 70 miles between her car and Damon, so there was nothing she could do right now, she reminded herself, attempting to force her mind to stop running five hundred miles a minute because it was going nowhere fast. She was 70 miles from home, the "empty" light above the gas gauge had just clicked on, and her phone battery was sitting at 32%. While the shambles of the already broken situation seemed to dissolve further, there was nothing to do now but sit and focus on the silence. Everything else could be worked out in the morning, when it's light. _A plan will come_, she assured herself, _just be quiet and calm down._

Unconsciously, her mind started to listen for Stefan's steady breathing to try and match her own shaky breaths with it...but it wasn't there. She opened her eyes and sat straight up just before he spoke.

"Klaus, huh?"

She caught his eyes in the rear view mirror. He looked tired, despite the hour and a half he'd just spent sleeping: purples splotches had appeared underneath his eyes and the vibrant green she'd been admiring earlier that evening was now dull and cloudy. Her heart ached and it was all she could do to not climb over the seat and hold him...stroke his hair like the night he woke her with his drunken escapades. Instead she simply asked, "how much of that did you hear?"

He laughed and it rang through the car the same way that it had the bathroom: empty, hollow, scared...fake. He ran a hand through his hair then looked down at the floorboards.

"I don't know, how much was there?"

"Stefan..."

"Caroline, you don't owe me anything." He furrowed his brow and shook his head, his eyes still on the floorboard. "You don't. You don't need to be mixed up in this, _trapped_ in this...I owe _you_ more than that, Caroline."

Before he could continue, she did it. She unbuckled the seat belt, took her key out of the ignition, and swung a leg over the seat to join him in the back. She hit her head on the security light, and lost her shoe when it got caught underneath the head rest, then finally plopped down next to him, no doubt looking as barely intact as she felt. She smoothed her now-disheveled hair, and adjusted her blouse, and he smirked. It made her smile. But he didn't.

"It's complex, Stef. Elena and Damon...they're just scared. We all were!" She picked at the purple nail polish on her right thumb. "We all _are_."

"Of me." Stefan retorted about as quietly as humanly possible, staring at his hands wringing in his lap.

"No! _For_ you, Stefan. We're all scared _for_ you. Damon and Elena are just trying to do what they think is best...what...I don't know..."

"You always pick your nail polish when you're nervous." He laughed hollowly again, his eyes still on the floor.

She felt her cheeks burning red at his irrelevant observation. "Yeah," she pushed her bangs behind her ear, "it's just a weird habit I have, I guess...it sucks, I can never maintain a manicure." She laughed awkwardly and held her hands out in surrender. He smiled at her like he was trying to offer hope to a little girl on her deathbed and her soul ached for him, if that was even possible.

"Why can't my bad habit be ruining my nail polish?"

"Stefan..." She grasped his left hand with her own and squeezed. "You're...it's just..."

Nothing that mattered would come out; words that would make him feel better, words that would ease whatever pain was throbbing through every cell in his body, words that would relieve his guilt...they were all in her brain, dancing just beyond her power of thought. She wanted to say something, desperately wanted to turn the doom and gloom that surrounded them into a sky full of clouds that seemed big, but secretly held beautiful, bright silver linings. Instead she just squeezed his hand harder.

Stefan couldn't see the silver linings, though.

"Why are you doing this? Why are you doing _all_ of this? Caroline..." He shook his head, his murky, tired eyes poring into her own, "Caroline, Damon and Elena are right."

"No they're not." She was almost surprised at how smoothly the words flowed out: collected and under control.

"Caroline, I don't..." he sat forward, away from her, grasping the head rest in front of him. "I don't know anything anymore, but they're right, I need to go back-"

"They aren't right, Stefan!" She yelled it, loud and stern, surprising even herself with the force behind it, and then silence enveloped them. Immediately. It almost took her breath away.

They sat stagnant in the back seat: Caroline twiddling her thumbs and Stefan still gripping the head rest like his life depended on it. She should speak, she knew it, but just like always, she couldn't think of anything to say that broken Stefan might find valuable. The thought made Caroline roll her eyes in frustration: he was the epitome of a mess, he had eaten a large chunk of the town, she had kidnapped him and drove him 70 miles away, and she was still worried about what he thought of her. Whether or not he found their friendship worthwhile.

It shouldn't matter, of course. They were friends! He had come back to her, he had let her keep him from annihilating her mother, he had been staying at her house before this whole mess started...they weren't just acquaintances connected by a mutual friend or lover. They were friends...independently, she mattered to him. He'd saved her life, both human and vampire, at least 30 times, all on his own will. Of course she mattered to him. He just wasn't fond of her help...didn't want her risking her life...or interfering in his...or getting too close. She couldn't tell which, but her desire to help him, to be there for him, burned inside her heart just as strongly as it ever had. And sometimes burns hurt.

"Would you do the same for me?" She asked before she could stop herself. "If the situation were reversed."

"What?" was the only response he gave, turning to look at her with confused eyes. Eyes that were still more tired than confused, though.

"If they wanted Klaus to compel me" her voice shook as she spoke and she hated it, "would you go along with it?"

He stared at her in apparent shocked silence. The only sound was her phone vibrating in the front seat. As if on cue, he answered as soon as it ceased.

"Of course not." His hands finally fell from the head rest to his lap and he leaned back next to her once again. "Caroline..."

Her hand found her hair to awkwardly brush through it a few more times while his hand found her bicep.

"No, listen, I'm just being lame, okay?" She leaned forward, putting distance between the two of them. How strange that they had suddenly reversed roles in just a split second of doubt. "I believe you...it's okay."

"No it's not." His grip on her arm tightened as he sat forward as well. "No, Caroline, I made you feel like I don't appreciate what you're doing for me and I do. Trust me, I do!" His right hand went over his heart symbolically. "But look at me."

She did. She looked up at him and his tired, fearful eyes, and his messed hair, and his wrinkled white t-shirt, and his eternally worried eyebrows. He looked like the same knight in shining armor that he always had been.

"Look at who I am, look at _where_ I am...Caroline, look at what I've done!" His hand moved to the head rest for a second time and wrapped around one of the tiny silver bars that elevated it. "You've got me on this pedestal where I don't belong." He looked down at his lap and his thumb began to stroke the back of her arm, so lightly that it almost went unnoticed.

"I'm not on that pedestal, Caroline." His eyes came back to hers. "I'm wallowing in the _gutter_...and you're letting me drag you in with me."

She turned away from him and shut her eyes, willing the hot liquid that was building up behind them to melt away. The shambles, of the shambles, of the shambles of their lives were now breaking. The A-Team Good Guys were practically nothing but a distant memory now.

"I don't wanna do that to you, not _you_." His voice broke as her head jerked back toward him.

"Not me? Not me, but anyone else?" Her heartbeat felt irregular in her chest. There was utter chaos raging through every atom of her being except for the few square inches that Stefan's hand covered on her arm. Even now, even still, he radiated her own personal type of peace. Sometimes she wondered how she had made it through life before he showed up in Mystic Falls...again.

"Not you, Caroline, because you...you would never be here if I weren't. You would never be trapped in this mess because you're so good at this." he continued, closing his eyes and laughing what sounded to be a genuine, non-fear-driven laugh. His first in weeks. It made the whole mess seem bearable, even if just for the three seconds that he did it. "I've been doing this for 150 years and you're better at it than I am in 2."

He laughed again and she did too. She shook her head forcefully, still laughing as the warm liquid she'd tried to wish away began to spill over onto her cheeks. It was quiet for a quick moment, just enough time for her to hear her phone begin to vibrate again. But they both disregarded it as Stefan went on.

"You are so good at everything that I'm complete shit at and, Caroline, you are my only hope that someone can be a blood-sucking monster...and still be good."

Something clicked inside of her brain when he said that. As she wiped tears from her face, her mental gears began to turn as if that had been the magic command they'd been waiting for since the day she was born. Latches began to slide into place and keys finally found the holes they'd been searching out for 18 years.

"No." She shook her head some more and kept laughing because it seemed like the only logical thing to do. "No...you're mine."

Maybe he did need her. Maybe he needed to be coddled, and taken care of, and told that he's a good guy, and reminded of his importance. Maybe she'd done everything right, exactly how he'd needed her to do it. But that wasn't where it ended. She needed him equally as badly.

When she'd first become a vampire, everything was so quick and confusing. All she knew was thirst, and blood, and black veins popping out of her sweet, blushing, teenage cheeks, and it was the most horrible thing that had ever happened to anyone, anywhere, ever...she'd been 100% positive of that. She was a monster, she wasn't human. Her life was over. Truly, honestly...she'd planned it all out. In melodramatic, teenage fashion, of course, but planned it all out, nonetheless. It wasn't a life she could live, killing strangers, eventually moving on to, what, acquaintances? Teachers? Friends? Her mother? She couldn't let it go on. She couldn't be a monster, she was **Caroline Forbes**, for God's sake. She was Miss Mystic!

But then Stefan had come. He took her to the bathroom and showed her the veins in his cheeks, showed her the black in his own eyes. And in that single moment while she sat on the school bathroom floor, her favorite scarf now stained red and sticky, she looked up at him and, for the first time since she'd grown fangs, thought that maybe, just maybe, it was possible. Possible for Caroline Forbes to still exist like this. Maybe not all monsters were..._monsters_. If Stefan was a vampire...funny, noble, kind, sensitive Stefan...all of her vampire hope rested solely in him.

"I put you on a pedestal," she spoke, her words surprisingly clear through the salty tears making their way down the same cheeks that had once been black with frightening veins, "because you're the first person in my life who I've ever thought could possibly deserve one."

She couldn't tell if the laugh she let out then was truly a laugh and not a sob. She heard her phone begin to vibrate again before Stefan brought his hand to the side of her face and gave her a small, sad smile. "Hey...you're okay."

There he was, her own personal savior, even throughout his own moment of weakness. He was the opposite of a monster.

"I know," she said, wrapping her hand around his wrist. "I'm fine."

Stefan smiled again, a little less sad, and his thumb moved back and forth a few times before she spoke again. "You didn't drag me into this gutter, Stefan...I jumped in after you."

His smile dropped then. Immediately it fell and it was replaced by deadpan seriousness, his eyes suddenly vibrantly green once again. At first, she wondered if she'd pissed him off, or made him uncomfortable, or crossed some invisible line that he'd secretly set up in their totally platonic friendship. His hand stayed frozen on her cheek but she looked away from him, already mentally writing a two-page apology that he would find believable...but then he said her name. He said her name and he pulled her into him simultaneously.

The hand that had been on her face now tangled in her hair as he held her against his shoulder, his other arm wrapping around her waist to smash every inch of her against every inch of him. But she didn't care, she didn't mind. Her right arm wrapped around his neck and squeezed so tightly that she briefly worried about choking him before she remembered that vampires can't suffocate. Her left arm wrapped underneath his arm and her fingers rested on his shoulder, underneath her chin. She squeezed, and he squeezed, and it was perfectly silent, with the exception of her phone still vibrating in the front seat, and she wanted to stay here forever. She had no plan, no gas, a half-dead cell phone, and the biggest fugitive Mystic Falls had ever seen sitting in her back seat...but right there, holding onto Stefan, none of that seemed too big a deal anymore. Just like that night in the bathroom...if Stefan was going to be there, she could face it.

They sat silent and intertwined for a few minutes that seemed like milliseconds before Stefan finally spoke again, his arms not budging from around her.

"Caroline?"

"Hmm?" She said, her mouth muffled by it's resting spot on his shoulder.

"Where are we?"

"Oh!" She pulled away and laughed awkwardly yet again, wiping the last remnants of moisture from her face. "We're in Briarwood."

"Briarwood." Stefan repeated the town's name, craning his neck to see through the front windshield.

"It seemed...far enough away." she responded, trusting that he would catch the hint of _who_ it was far enough away from. "Well...that and I ran out of gas."

He looked back at her and smiled, seeming surprised, or touched, or sympathetic. She couldn't tell which. "I owe you a tank."

"Oh, you _so_ owe me a tank." She made an attempt to lighten the mood and it worked, resulting in Stefan grinning and shaking his head.

"Remind me," he laughed, "the next time we're hanging around a Texaco."

His smile fell, though, as they both heard her phone begin to vibrate for roughly the seventeenth time. "Caroline, you need to answer that."

"No." Her left fingernails unconsciously began to peel purple polish from her right fingernails. "I know who it is." Stefan's return to the land of the living had raised her a few notches out of the depths, but she was still in no mood to rekindle her conversation with Damon and/or his new lover. Especially not when her voice was still shaky with tears and her deluded plan was becoming weaker by the second.

Stefan's hand was suddenly on hers, prying away the left one to save the nails of the right one, and smiling at her like she was on her deathbed again. "Answer it."

Obeying his kind eyes, she moved to reach over the seat and grabbed the phone. Where she had expected to see Damon's or Elena's name flashing, however, was just a combination of numbers...ones that her phone clearly didn't recognize as significant. "It's not them."

She looked at Stefan. He furrowed his eyebrows briefly before raising them and nodding at her in affirmation. She slid the green tab on the screen to answer it.

She said hello and, for the briefest of seconds, she panicked. What if it was Klaus? What if Damon and Elena had already filled him in, already gone to him...what if he was calling to collect on a promise? If it was him, she had no doubt that their hiding place would be frivolous. Klaus finds whoever he wants to find.

But a female voice rang into her ear instead. One high and shrill with worry and anxiety. "Caroline? Caroline Forbes? Oh, thank God!"

"What..." her relief at the non-Original voice almost brought tears to her eyes. "Who is this?"

"Caroline, it's Bobbi Miller from the station. I work with your mom...my daughter is Kendra, from Mystic High...remember?"

Stefan leaned close to her, clearly listening to the woman's words just as intently and curiously as Caroline was. "Oh, yeah! Of course, I do, hi."

"Caroline, where are you honey? I've been trying to reach you!" Caroline could hear phones ringing off the hook in the background, interrupted by the occasional _Mystic Falls PD, how can I help you?_ Before she could ask any questions of her own, Bobbi Miller continued: "Oh, sweetheart, it's your mom. There's been an accident."

Just like Stefan's breathing, the woman's words seemed to slow everything down...this time it was nearly at a standstill. Accident. Accident? Accident. What did that word even mean with no specifics attached to it? Why would you just leave it at that? So vague! And who the hell was Bobbi Miller? She'd lied about remembering, she didn't think she'd ever seen this woman in her life...but Kendra Miller was in her Psychology class, she was like 98% sure of that. It was the most pointless train of thought she could have possibly taken, but it was the only one her brain would form: Kendra Miller...she had glasses, didn't she? Caroline clung to a fuzzy memory of the girl congratulating her after she took the Miss Mystic crown. She had dark hair and glasses, yes, that was right, and she'd worn a green dress that Caroline had thought was the second prettiest of the day...second only to her own, of course. Kendra Miller...Bobbi Miller...an accident, a fucking accident...

Thank God for Stefan's hand on her wrist because who knows if she ever would have come out of her own brain if he hadn't been there.

"You need gas," was all he said when she looked up at him, shaking her head and stuttering out syllables as Bobbi Miller called her name through the phone.

Stefan climbed over the seat and twisted the key that she'd absentmindedly left sitting in the ignition. The car roared to life and she finally responded to Bobbi's anxious voice.

"What do you mean? What happened?! Where is my mom?"

* * *

**a/n: **I like bits & pieces of this...I hate other bits & pieces. But I would so appreciate your REVIEWS, POR FAVOR, regardless! :D  
* and, as always, I'm not trying to vilify D&E, I LOVE THEM. Delena 4-ever, suckers. Delena & Steroline, that's how I **need** it to be, GET IT TOGETHER JULIE PLEC. Good grief.


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